Saraki Must Step Down As Senate President For The South East – NIM

Ndigbo Integration Movement, NIM, after carefully watching the interplays in the National Assembly, particularly the Senate, and having undertaken due consultations with its members and indeed stakeholders in Igbo Nation, has found it necessary to reiterate on the need for a change in Senate leadership for the sake of justice, peace and equity. To this end, NIM calls on Senate President Bukola Saraki to vacate his seat in the senate leadership and pave the way for a Senator from the South East of the country to emerge in his stead.

Recall that part of the reasons why the slot was denied the South East was because no Senator from the zone got elected under the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC in 2015.

But going by the current reconfiguration of the Senate along party lines what with defections by erstwhile lawmakers elected on the platform APC to a new party, we now have a situation where a Senator of Igbo extraction can emerge as Senate President.

We are happy to note that Saraki, as part of his grouse, for defecting from the APC, alleged that appointments by federal government were skewed against his political group and followers, stating that such arrangement, as he perceived it, is to the detriment of federal balance and character.

He, of all people, should understand the current lopsidedness in the structure in the three arms of government, viz the Executive (Presidency); the Legislature (the National Assembly) and the Judiciary (the courts).

As currently structured, the Presidency has President Mohammadu Buhari, (North West) at the helms with his Deputy, Yemi Osinbajo (South West) as vice president. The National Assembly has Senator Saraki (North Central) as Head of the Senate and chairman of the legislative institution while the House of Reps, has Yakubu Dogara, North East) as Speaker. The entire south is only fortunate to have Walter Onoghen as chief justice purely by happenstance and by virtue of his promotion being statutory.

As Nigerians will recall, we have been down this road before, where individuals for personal and selfish reasons, blinded by vaunting ambition, subverted the zoning arrangement meant to allow for balancing in the federal governance structure. The consequences, as we all recall has been unsavory. Indeed, the current upheavals in the Senate and the House of Reps all bore down to this singular factor. As initially permuted by the ruling APC, the Senate was meant to have been zoned to the South East.

But for the ambition of one man, the right of a strategically important geopolitical zone like the South East was subverted. Three years on, here we are, once again forced to learn from the same repeated mistake.

NIM and indeed its broad membership in and outside the country insist that this must change. Senator Saraki must step down for an Igbo Senator to emerge as Senate President.