Nigeria Content Online

The Senate has debunked media reports
that some senators that lost their parties’ ticket to return to the
National Assembly are planning to impeach the senate leadership.There
are reports that some senators, apparently unhappy with the rate at
which they lost their party primaries, are planning to clog the
leadership of the senate who ironically had a high rate of success in
the primary elections.

The senators, who cut across both the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN)
are allegedly unhappy that unlike the executive, the senate leadership
did not aid their re-election.“It is not the duty of principal officers
to fix primaries for senators in an era where we are talking of one man
one vote,” Ayogu Eze, the senate spokesman said in a reactionary press
release.

Mr Eze added that since the processes
of nomination of candidates in the parties are still ongoing, till
January 31,2011, “It is therefore preposterous at this point to
conclude that any candidate has won or lost. Besides, loss of primary
election in one party does not mean that the candidate is not returning
to the senate as the reports suggest, as there are other platforms and
vehicles through which those short-changed in their parties but who
feel they are liked by their people can return to the senate.”

More than 50 senators recently lost
their bids to reclaim their party’s ticket to rerun for the senatorial
election in the forthcoming general election causing a massive
defection of the lawmakers to opposition parties where they may be able
to clinch a ticket to run for the elections.

“I’m aware that many senators have left
the parties through which they came to the Senate and have adopted
other political platforms to pursue their ambitions to return to the
Senate in April 2011,” the senate spokesman confirmed.

He also argued that not all senators
who are thought to have lost the primaries actually did.“For instance
even after I won the seat in my district by polling 1,620 votes out of
a total of 2,110 votes in my district,reports have continued to suggest
that I did not make the primaries.“In my own case, the primaries were
not conducted till January 15, 2011 because of the crisis instigated in
the state chapter of our party by the national leadership of the party.
I imagine that this scenario can be extrapolated to the cases of other
senators,” he added.

However, the senate which was scheduled to resume after three weeks
vacation postponed their resumption date by one week fuelling
speculations that there is a counter plot to disperse the lawmakers and
cool their tempers before they congregate.