The All Progressives Congress, APC, has vowed to impeach the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki.
The party also said it would do everything within its powers to make sure that Saraki does not return to the Senate come 2019.
In a news conference Friday in Abuja, National Chairman of the party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole also asked Saraki to resign honourably.
He said, “There is the futile attempt he has made to suggest that the Tuesday’s incident was an attempt to carry out an illegal impeachment. How can a presiding officer arrive at such a conclusion that there was a plan to carry out an illegal impeachment?
“Until an action takes place, you cannot determine the outcome. If impeachment itself is unlawful, then you can understand where he is coming from. It is lawful to impeach anyone, including the President of the Senate and his deputy if the number required to do so is present.
“So, he cannot preempt that. From their own statement, they claimed to be aware that the Senate President was going to be illegally impeached and so mobilized thugs to the senate. They told the world that they have adjourned till 25th September. But meanwhile, about 15 PDP Senators were in the Senate and imported thugs that molested two of our members they sighted in the senate.
“Did you find any APC senator in the senate? If APC senators were not in the senate and it was PDP Senators that were there, what is the basis of the false claim that there was an attempt to carry out an illegal impeachment?
“In any case, Saraki is not going to be the first senate president to be impeached and I doubt if he is going to be the last. But definitely, he will be impeached according to law and democratic norms.
“The only way he can avoid impeachment is for him to do what is honourable. We saw Sen. Akpabio who was the PDP leader in the senate. Once he made up his mind to leave the PDP, he wrote to inform the PDP even before his defection that he was resigning.
“So, Senator Saraki has demonstrated neither character nor being a man of honour. I told him when we held a meeting that he came to join the APC as a senator and it is on our platform that you became senate president.
“Once you made up your mind to leave, the honourable thing to do is to resign as senate president. If he does not resign, he will be impeached according to law and not by thuggery or by mob or anything that is undemocratic. He cannot sustain a minority rule in the senate and that is what is haunting him in the senate.
“When I say that the senate president will be impeached, let me emphasise that he will be impeached properly according to the law. The constitution is clear how a presiding officer can be impeached and because several impeachments have taken place, we are not about to witness what has not taken place before. We have enough precedents to fall back on.
” I have looked at the constitution which does not say that an impeachment is illegal. Until it is done, you cannot arrive at the conclusion that it is unlawful. How can we be accused of planning an illegal impeachment when it has not commenced? If he thinks that by saying that he will preempt the APC from having him impeached, he is deceiving himself.
“I think that the time of Saraki is over, the way he has manipulated the politics of Kwara state, he failed to understand that the Nigerian project is far more complicated than being at the mercy of his own dynasty.
“He will not only be impeached, we will work hard to have him defeated as a senator in his own Senatorial zone come 2019 by the people of Kwara state who are fed up with Saraki. Go and check the results of the elections that made him a senator and you will find out that the President got more votes from Kwara Central than Saraki got for himself.
“So, he can’t claim that the vote the APC got from his Senatorial zone was because of him. They were in spite of him and that is why his leaving is of no political consequence as far as electoral issues are concerned. We tried to talk to him, not out of fear, but out of conviction that as a presiding officer, there are rules of engagement and we don’t want him to get so emotional as to affect those rules of engagements.”
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