President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday stemmed further depletion of membership of his All Progressives Congress (APC) in the National Assembly by begging 22 senators not to leave the party.
No fewer than five APC senators had in the last an one week defected from the ruling party to other parties. They include Senators Yahaya Abdullahi, Adamu Aliero (Kebbi) and Baba Kaita (Katsina).
The 22 senators were led by the Majority Whip, Orji Uzor Kalu, to the Presidential Villa where the issue if their planned defection was tabled and the president prevailed on them. Buhari was said to have urged the Senators to exercise restraint in their decision to defect from the party.
Appealing to the lawmakers, Buhari said their defections will cause a threat to the APC’s majority in the National Assembly. He assured them that their grievances would be looked into by the leadership of the party.
The aggrieved senators had vowed to dump the party to show their displeasure with the outcome of recent primaries in their state in which many of them failed to secure return tickets.
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This was largely due to tussle with their state governors over control of party structures in their states. After the meeting, Sen Kalu said the lawmakers felt disenfranchised by the primary elections process.
The former Abia State governor assured that the aggrieved senators have shelved their defection plans after the interface with President Buhari, who is the leader of APC.
Writing on his social media page Kalu later said “Earlier this afternoon, I led the 22 aggrieved Senators and members of the All Progressive Congress to President Muhammad Buhari, GCFR.” “Our meeting with Mr President was successful and the issue of decamping from our party has been laid to rest”.
