Sacked senator representing Adamawa North, Elisha Abbo, has fingered the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio as the brain behind his removal from office.
Abbo, a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), addressed a press conference on Monday in Abuja after the court of appeal removed him from office. He said his decision not to support Akpabio for Senate presidency was his sole offence.
The Abuja Division of the court of appeal in a judgement delivered on Monday, declared Amos Yohanna of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the duly elected senator for the Adamawa north senatorial district.
The now sacked senator said there are four more senators, including Orji Uzor Kalu, senator representing Abia south, who would be removed from office because they did not support Akpabio in June.
While Abbo backed Abdulaziz Yari, senator representing Zamfara west, for the office of senate president, Kalu nursed the ambition of becoming the number three citizen but did not eventually run for the office.
“I heard it from a reliable source which I won’t call the name now that five senators will be removed from the senate. Those who did not stand with my brother, my elder brother, and my good colleague, distinguished Senate President Akpabio,” Abbo said.
“Those who did not vote for him, five of us are going and I am number one. Orji Uzor Kalu will go. They have pencilled five of us.
They told me that I am going because we did not support the emergence of my brother Akpabio in emerging as president of the senate. This is not democracy.
“We have hope in the court, let us build the country, the international community is watching us.
“You cannot withdraw a ground and the court of appeal restore a ground without the lawyer asking for that ground to be restored and voiding somebody’s election.
“This is a coup on democracy.”
I have no hands in your ordeal – Akpabio reacts
Reacting to the claim, Eseme Eyiboh, spokesperson for Akpabio, said it is uncharitable for Abbo to pour his frustrations on the senate president.
“It is only a diseased and uninformed mind that will not believe that the outcome of any court proceeding is a function of the evaluation of facts and evidence within the province of the rule of law,” he said.
“Democracy is founded in the rule of law, so for anybody to accuse one of the strong agents of democracy and governance in the mold of Senator Godswill Akpabio, such an individual must be a monument of self-pity and his swansong a discordant escape from reality.”
Eyiboh said the senate president does not harbour any ill will against any of the senators and he has since moved on from the election that brought him into office as senate president.
