Serious Tension In The Senate

After failing to come up with a reasonable excuse why he happily allow Senators to decamp from their party to PDP in the past, Senate President David Mark cited a court order and declined to accept the defecting 11 PDP Senators’ letter who have indicated their intention to join the APC.

At a closed door session of the Senate on Wednesday, Mark reportedly said he would not accept the letter until the injunction restraining him and House of Reps Speaker Aminu Tambuwal is vacated.

But Tambuwal has been reading letters of Senators who who are moving from APC to PDP and from PDP to APC, so what exactly is holding Mark if not the fear the fear of the unknown?

Anyway, leader of the defecting Senators, Bukola Saraki, was said to have sought to invoke Order 14, which deals with Privileges, to read the letter, if Mark’s “lands are tied”. His request was refused.

It was gathered that Mark opened up for the first time, at the Executive Session, on the controversy trailing the senators’ defection. Mark, it was learnt allowed exhaustive debate on the propriety of reading the letter on the floor of the Senate.

A Senator who spoke on the matter, said: “I think there was a gross misinterpretation of the court injunction and Order 53(5) by the President of the Senate. The same scenario was obtainable in the House of Reps and Speaker Aminu Tambuwal allowed members to defect to parties of their choice.

“Why is the Senate being holier than thou? Why are we more Catholic than the Pope in the Senate? I suspect a hidden agenda by PDP and a likely ambush of the 11 Senators for some reasons. I hope the President of the Senate will watch his back well.”