"Decision of 11 PDP senators who defect to APC should be respected" - Saraki

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology, Bukola Saraki, has said that the decision by some senators, who have chosen to decamp from the Peoples Democratic Party to the opposition, APC should be respected, as the trend of defection “is not new.”

Speaking on the letter of defection which led to disagreements between senators on both sides of the PDP/APC divide, as a result of the Senate President’s refusal to read the letter on the floor of the Senate, Saraki said that “the practice has always been in the past that when Senators or members of the House of Representatives change their party for whatever reason, they come to the floor and indicate their interest by writing to the leadership, quoting section 68 of the constitution. The leadership reads it and it goes into the records of the Senate that you have defected to another party.”


He added that the laid down procedures “had been working very well in the past but unfortunately now, it seems not to be working as it used to.”

He said arguments that the senators who decamp will lose their seats are false as the trend is not new in the country. “I think between the House and the Senate, there are over 20 cases since 1999, where people had defected quoting the same section.

“There’s not been any hullabaloo about it. There’s been no noise. It’s gone smoothly. People have left the opposition party to the ruling party, now it’s the other way round, people are quoting and trying to hold on to what doesn’t exist.

He added that “as of today, there’s no law that stops any of the senators or members of the House of Representatives to say that they have left their party.”

“The issue at the end of the day is that most of these decisions are based on your constituencies. At the end of the day, that’s what we represent.

“We have moved. We have taken those decisions. I think that it needs to be respected.

The former governor of Kwara State advocated for consistency in government process, adding that “every time we do things to suit the situation, it goes back to bite us and haunt us later.”

He argued that the case concerning defection is the same in both legislative houses and should not be treated differently. “One would wonder if the legal experts who are advising the Senate President are totally different from those advising the Speaker. I mean, it’s the same case.”