Deputy Senate President, Chief Ike Ekweremadu, has thrown light on how he, aided by his fellow party men in the Senate, negotiated his way back to his former position, asserting that they had to look critically at history in order to succeed.
He noted that members of his camp asked themselves what the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe would have done should he find himself in the same precarious political situation where it seemed that Ndigbo were going to lose out completely if no concrete effort was made.
Disclosing this at a reception organized for him by the people of Enugu West Senatorial zone at the weekend in Enugu, the lawmaker however assured President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress, APC, of his determination alongside his Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, colleagues at the Upper Chamber to work harmoniously with them and stir Nigeria to the path of purposeful leadership and development.
According to him, “By 28 of March, there was election and there was some kind of Tsunami that swept aside the Peoples Democratic Party. The only parts of Nigeria that were afloat were indeed South-east and South-south. We were afloat and we say we have no apologies to anybody. If we have the opportunity, we will do it again and remain afloat.
“But there was sadness and apprehension among the Igbos and among our brothers in the South-south. So we decided to do something; we then asked ourselves, if Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe had found himself in this kind of situation, what would he do? So we had to look back in history – in the 1960s where NCNC went to election and lost to NPC. Zik had to negotiate himself back to power and became the President of Nigeria.
“In 1979, NPP (Nigeria Peoples Party) that was so dominant in the east lost in the presidential election; Zik and his colleagues also negotiated himself back to power and Edwin Umezuoke became the speaker of the House of Representatives,” he said.
Ekweremadu further charged those gathered at his Enugu residence, “to ensure the inclusiveness of the Igbo man in the scheme of things; we had to rally round our friends and colleagues; we reached out to our brothers in the South-south. We reached out to our other brothers in the North, and we consolidated on the fact that we have 49 senators who are members of PDP. We believed we had a strong bloc that could determine who will be the president of Nigerian Senate.
“For that to happen, something had to give in and that is called negotiation in politics. So we negotiated wisely, and today, not only is PDP part of the leadership of the National Assembly at presiding officer’s level, but the Igbo man is also in the ship of state,” he stated.
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