Sanctioning Saraki/Dogara: Lai Mohammed says party is in a dilemma

The National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Lai Mohammed says the party is currently in a dilemma in regards to carrying out its planned sanction on their party members, Senator Bukola Saraki and Hon Yakubu Dogara for presenting themselves for elections at the National Assembly against the party's wish. 

 

While speaking on Channels TV this morning, Lai Mohammed said there have been reservations expressed by some people that the party might lose its majority in the house to the PDP if they do not manage the situation properly 

"Yes people have expressed that concern but how do you maintain cohesion and discipline in the country and the same time ensure that you continue to maintain the majority in the house. Now what happens if this goes unpunished and unquestioned, then anybody in the party can do what they like. So this is the dilemma the party is facing. The dilemma within the party is how on one hand we ensure cohesion and  discipline within the party and the same time ensure that the matter does not deteriorate. The real danger the party faces now is having the leadership of the national assembly which you cannot call your own. The leadership of the national assembly that does not share your agenda. The leadership that does no share your vision. If you understand how the National Assembly works and the kind of power the leadership has, you will understand the danger of what happened yesterday.  For instance today, we can no longer talk about having leadership caucus in the National Assembly today because the leadership is made up of both the PDP and the APC. So there is nothing personal to APC that can be discussed in confidence without the PDP knowing. It means if a letter goes to the President to the Senate, it means it will go to the leadership of the PDP, APC, everybody even before our own members read it. It is quite a serious issue"he said. 

He said he cannot pinpoint any mistake his party made that led them to this current situation.

Asked if the party can afford to suspend Saraki and Dogara, he said "The party can afford to do anything to maintain discipline"

He explained why the party described the actions of Saraki and Dogara as treachery

"Well you see when we were campaigning, we campaigned against the PDP because we believed that the PDP after 16 years did not live up to the expectations of Nigerians. Now if any of our members now want to be Senate President or Speaker and he is going to rely on the same opposition that was displaced and in total defiance to the party's directives, its Treachery. If 57 people voted to elect senate president, that speaks volumes. That means there are only 8 senators from the APC that joined the 49 Senators from the PDP. If Femi scored 174 votes, that means out of the 209 members of the APC in the house of Reps, only 30 moved over. So clearly, what happened yesterday was rebellion by a very small minority of the members elect, that is why we call it treachery"he said 

On why the meeting with President Buhari and members of the APC which was supposed to resolve all issues between party members before the National Assembly leadership election did not hold as expected at the International Conference Center Abuja  yesterday June 9th, he said

"The meeting did not hold for two reasons. One, those members of the party that were bent on disobeying the party directives did not trun up and while the President was preparing to come to attend the meeting with all other faithful, loyal members of the party, he was informed they had already started voting in the upper chambers and at that point in time there was no point for him to come to join the meeting. That is why we now asked our members to go back  to the National assembly while we went to the presidency"he said