David Mark, Ekweremadu In Trouble Over Forgery Allegation

The leadership crisis in Nigeria’s national assembly may have taken a turn for the worse with the invitation of the deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu by the police for questioning over the rules used to conduct elections on 9 June.

A petition by Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi(Kaduna North), suggested that the rules used for the election of both Senator Bukola Saraki as senate president and Ike Ekweremadu as deputy senate president were forged.

The extant rules at the end of the 7th Senate early in June, this year clearly spelt out that the election of the principal officers shall be by open ballot. This was the rule, senators who spoke with TheNEWS, said was adopted in 2011 and remained till the end of the life of the 7th Senate.

Senators, old and serving, were surprised when a new rule suddenly emerged to guide the election of some of the officers on 9 June. One of the senators from Akwa Ibom state, Ita Solomon Enang, who was the chairman of the senate committee on business and rules and who was therefore the custodian of the rules has denied the existence of the 2015 rules. Enang, who is now a member of the All Progressives Congress has also petitioned the police that the rules used to conduct the election were forged.

The suspicion is that the rules were concocted by the former president of the senate, David Mark, Ekweremadu, who also served as deputy senate president during Mark’s era and the clerks of the Senate and the National Assembly.

TheNEWS learnt that the clerks have already been invited for interrogation and have made statements. TheNEWS sources indicated that David Mark will also be interrogated this week.

But the Peoples Democratic Party is making a political capital out of this routine police investigation, describing it as an attempt by the All Progressives Congress to blackmail Ekweremadu to vacate the position.

Olisa Metuh in a statement issued in Abuja today made this allegation.

“Apparently to ensure that the agenda is given an official stamp, the Inspector General of Police, acting on instructions has invited the Deputy Senate President with a view to arresting him over phantom charges as a build up to incarcerate him, create a vacuum in the Senate and pave way for the imposition of APC preferred senator to take over his position.

“We are aware that some APC senators opposed to the emergence of Senators Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu as Senate President and Deputy Senate President respectively met last week and concocted a petition accusing the Deputy Senate President of altering the Senate Rules on the process of election of the Presiding Officers, upon which the police via a letter dated July 1, 2015 and signed by the Deputy Inspector General in charge of criminal investigation at the Force Headquarters has invited him to appear tomorrow, Monday, July 6, 2015 where he will be detained and put under pressure.

“Apart from the fact that the Nigerian Constitution clearly guarantees the two chambers of the National Assembly the powers to regulate their proceedings without external interferences, we note that the petition by this group of senators who enjoy the sympathy of some APC leaders lacks merit as Senator Ekweremadu or any other senator-elect prior to the inauguration of the Senate and the election of presiding officers, could not have been involved in the process of producing the 2015 Standing Rules of the Senate which was strictly done by the bureaucracy under the Clerk to the National Assembly”, the PDP said in defence of Ekweremadu.

Source: TheNews