The Senate plenary was temporarily halted for 15 minutes yesterday when the All Progressives Congress (APC) senators protested the refusal of the Senate president, David Mark, to read the letter of intent of 11 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senators who were defecting to the APC. The 11 senators had written a formal letter of notice to defect to the APC from the PDP, which was not read on the floor on Wednesday by the president of the Senate. Trouble started shortly after the deputy president of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who presided over the plenary session in the absence of Senator Mark, concluded the pre-plenary procedures without reading the letter or even making a reference to it, thus prompting the arrowhead of the defecting senators – Bukola Saraki (PDP, Kwara) – to raise Order 15 of the Senate Rules to enforce his privileges. He recalled that he and 10 other PDP senators had in a letter put the chair on notice yesterday (Wednesday) over their change of political party and that he felt that it was necessary for him to bring to the attention of the deputy president of the Senate that the letter had not yet been read. Ekweremadu responded by telling Saraki that the Senate president had travelled and that he had told him that both of them (Mark and Saraki) had a discussion during which they agreed to meet on Monday over the issue and, as such, it was appropriate to stand down anything relating to that.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 06:42:05 +0000
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