Senate rule forgery: Alternate power tussle tool against Saraki, Ekweremadu

By CYPRIAN AJAH, Enugu

THE trial of the President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, and the Deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, for forgery of the Senate Rules 2015 has continued to generate deepening controversies across the country, essentially, propping up sentiments of ethnic and regional hegemonic interests between political actors.

It has continued to be bizarre to many stakeholders in the Nigerian project that the federal government insisted on pursuit of the allegation which Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court, Abuja, struck out last year on the grounds that the Senate is an independent arm of the government that has the power to decide its operational rules or regulations.

A source revealed to National Daily that the pressure to proceed with the alleged forgery case was to adopt an alternative tool of power struggle for the leadership of the Senate by opponents of the Senate President. This was said to become germane when the power bloc in the All Progressives Congress (APC) battling with Saraki are beginning to feel that the prosecution of the Senate President on false declaration of assets at the Code of Conduct Tribunal may not achieve the desired result.

Our investigation showed that the lingering crisis is not quite about executive/legislature impasse. President Muhammadu Buhari has from the beginning declared he will not interfere in any of the issues, insisting that all issues should exhaust the legal processes.

However, there are indications that the frequent overseas travel of the President created a vacuum for the opponents of Saraki and Ekweremadu, who they described as ‘tigers of the senate’, within the rank of APC leadership to infiltrate the Presidency and using the principal officers from the crystal of executive power to prosecute the battle against the Senate leadership. “That was basis of Saraki raising alarm that a cabal has hijacked the current federal government,” National Daily was told.

Opinion polls monitored in the country by National Daily revealed that powerful individuals have vowed to destabilize the Senate unless the leadership is re-constituted to suit their purpose. The cabal was accused of having drafted certain bills which they will use as a legal tool to pursue their personal interest at the detriment of Nigerians but was scared to send the bills to the National Assembly now because it might not see the light of the day in the red chamber of the National Assembly. It was also gathered that the cabal had relied on a court order, believing that if the accusers are convicted, their successors would pass the bills into law. To the consternation of Nigerians, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), had a fortnight ago, called on the leadership of the Senate to resign from their position after the FCT High Court, Jabi, failed to remand Saraki and others in prison ago. The presiding judge, Justice Gabriel Kolawole, had noted that the forgery case filed against the presiding officers of the Senate was an abuse of court process.

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Justice Gabriel Kolawole had ruled that the AGF ought not to have filed the suit when there was a separate court case challenging the competence of the Police report on which he based his actions. Though, the judge did not throw out the forgery case because it was before another court of concurrent jurisdiction, he questioned Malami’s motives. It was revealed that before Malami became AGF and Justice Minister, he was a lawyer to the aggrieved senators who lost in the senate leadership race and later accused Saraki of forgery.

Apparently, the Senate declared that the Attorney General of the Federation was acting a personal and partisan script.

Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, had stated that, “Malami has personal and pecuniary interest in the case as he was a counsel to the aggrieved Senators who decided to externalize the issue of election of the leadership of the upper chamber of the National Assembly after they failed in their bid to get their preferred candidates elected.”

Abdullahi observed that Malami was “the one who advised his clients to report the matter to the Police and now that he has become AGF, he decided to use his constitutional powers to pursue private interest by filing a criminal case in the FCT High Court against the subsisting ruling of a court of co-ordinate jurisdiction.”

More so, Senator Dino Melaye accused the AGF of charging Saraki and Ekweremadu to court for perceived false allegations of forgery. Melaye had argued that the decision of the AGF to reopen the forgery charge after Justice Kolawole of an Abuja Federal High Court had struck out the case was a threat to democracy. The Committee on Judiciary had in a resolution, invited the AGF to appear before it on two occasions – Thursday, June 23 and Thursday, June 30, 2016 – but he ignored them.

At one level, the APC leadership and Saraki appear to have drawn the battle line. APC National Chairman was reported to have said penultimate week that the party will not mind losing the senate president in the war with Saraki. The Senate President was also said to have declared that he would not mind going to prison in the battle. In an interaction with National Daily, a first time senator who pleaded anonymity said the federal government should commit its energy to the pressing security challenges and economic hardship facing the country and stop chasing shadows. He cautioned that “the way they overstress the forgery case is capable of destabilizing both the arms of government and plunge the country into political catastrophe if not properly handled.” He declared: “we know that it is a ploy by the federal government to destabilize the Senate and render the legislature ineffective; but we will not allow it. I implore my colleagues to rise up and defend their mandates because the fall of the leadership of the Senate is the fall of the Upper Chamber. What is about to happen to Saraki and Ekweremadu may happen to any of us. My colleagues should remember that an injury to one is injury to all.”

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Meanwhile, Ekweremadu has written to the parliament of the European Union, (EU), the United Nations, United States, governments of the United Kingdom and other foreign missions, over “an attempt to truncate Nigeria’s democracy.” He alleged that the fight was aimed at silencing him as leader and the highest ranking member of the Opposition Political Party in the country, in the name of prosecuting an alleged forgery case. He accused the federal government of complicity in handling democratic issues in the country.

In the other hand, Saraki in his statement had vowed to defend his office and the mandate given to the senators rather than bow to the persecutors while reiterating his readiness to gladly go to jail instead of compromising his legitimate rights to those he described as power hijackers.

It will be recalled that the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami was one of the lawyers that represented senators of the Unity Forum that sued Saraki, Ekweremadu and others last year for allegedly forging the Senate rules. But Justice Kolawole of the Federal High Court, Abuja, had ruled that the alleged forgery of the Senate rules was the chamber’s internal affair.