Oshiomhole boasted that the party will not only deploy its machinery to stop him from returning to the Senate but will crumble the Saraki political dynasty

Romanus Ugwu, Abuja

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has warned that the only action that can save the Senate President, Bukola Saraki from impeachment will be his voluntary resignation from the position.

National Chairman of the ruling party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, who gave the warning while reacting to the world press conference by the Senate President, boasted that the party will not only deploy its machinery to stop him from returning to the Senate but will also crumble the Saraki political dynasty.

Accusing the Senate president of frustrating every effort by the current government for selfish reasons, he argued that none of his actions has ever been in the public interest.

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The APC chairman railed: “Unfitted attempts he has made and his unsubstantiated allegations to the effect that the event of last Tuesday was an attempt to carry out illegal impeachment. How can a presiding officer arrive at such conclusion that there was a plan to carry out illegal impeachment? Until an action takes place, how can you determine the status?

“If the impeachment by itself is unlawful, the act of impeachment is unlawful, then you can probably understand where it is coming from. But it is lawful to impeach anyone including the President of the Senate, including the deputy president of the Senate if the number required to do so is present. So he cannot preempt, as they say, you don’t have to be a pathological liar before you understand this generally shared view that once you start with one lie, you will need a series of lies to support that one lie.

“I don’t want to use the word lie to characterise the action of the statement from the Senate President. But let us look at the fact, from their own statement, they said they were aware that the Senate President was to be illegally impeached and therefore, they mobilised thugs, they mobilised their journalists, cameramen and videos to the Senate.

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“They had told the world they had adjourned till September 25; meanwhile, about 15 PDP senators were in the Senate; and for the event, they imported hundreds of thugs that molested one or two of our members that they sighted in the premises of the Senate.

“In order to evade the lies, I asked you as a defendant of democracy, did you find any APC senator in the Senate? So, if APC senators were not in the Senate, and it’s PDP senators that were in the Senate, what is the basis of the false report that there were attempts to carry out 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 Saraki can avoid impeachment is for him to do what is honourable, which again, leads to the issue of character. We saw Senator Akpabio who was the PDP leader in the Senate, once he made up his mind to leave the PDP, even before announcing his defection, the first role is to inform the PDP [that]”as a man of honour I hereby resigned from this office.” 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, not by thuggery or mob or anything undemocratic. He cannot sustain a minority rule in the Senate and that is what is haunting him in the Senate.

Without mincing words, Oshiomhole clarified further in no uncertain terms: “When I say that the Senate President will be impeached, let me emphasize that he will be impeached properly according to law. The constitution is clear on 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 precedent to fall back on. I have looked at the constitution, which does not say that an impeachment is illegal. 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?

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“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.”