Fifty seven PDP members in the House of Representatives who on Tuesday expressed their loyalty to the faction of the party led by Alhaji Kawu Baraje today dismissed the threat by the factional National Chairman of PDP, Alhaji Bamanga that their seats will be declared vacant. Tukur had at a press conference on Wednesday threatened not only to declare the seats of the defecting lawmakers vacant but to order their arrest by security agencies.
But in a daring statement signed by Hon Sekonte Davies today, the lawmakers berated Tukur for acting like a garrison commander and for displaying crass ignorance of the Electoral Act 2006 and the 1999 constitution.
According to the lawmakers ” it has been brought to our attention the statements credited to Alh. Bamanga Tukur, the erstwhile National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Indeed, it is unfortunate if he really made the comments credited to him. For the avoidance of doubt, we state that it is this type of garrison attitude that has brought the PDP to where it is today and that is why we shall spare no effort to redeem it from those who are bent on destroying it, like Alh. Bamanga Tukur.
“You know, it is easy to destroy a thing and since Bamanga Tukur was not a founding father of the Party, he does not understand the underlying principles and reasons why it was founded in the first place. PDP was founded on the principle of national consensus building and to be a platform to unite the various sections and interests in the country.
“The nation was going adrift and well-meaning leaders and patriots decided to form this all-embracing political party which every Nigerian will be proud to belong to and to provide a nexus for nation building. Alh. Bamanga Tukur was not one of those patriots.
“Again, as he had operated the Constitution of the Party mostly in breach, he thinks that he can also do the same with the Nigerian Constitution and the Electoral Act. From all relevant sections of these laws and as severally pronounced by the Supreme Court, you cannot declare anybody’s seat vacant especially when the party is in factions.
“Moreover, since he has not been a member of the Party, he does not also know that PDP is the greatest beneficiary of party factionalisation and fractionalisation in the present dispensation of our democratic journey.
“Furthermore, we don’t know when political disagreements within a political party became a State offence such that the former Chairman of PDP should ask the security agencies to harass and arrest his opponents. We thought this was what the military and the political cowardly did.
“However, we are not surprised, nonetheless, because a drowning man can hold on to anything he thinks will help him to stay afloat and survive. Weaklings and losers always seek to use whatever powers they think are at their disposal, irrespective of how in appropriate that may be, shore up a lost cause.
“On this note, we also hope that the relevant authorities will call him to order because when this is not done and they are accused of supporting impunity and being complicit, the usual mantra of being dragged into a matter they are not involved in shall surface again. We want to believe that the Presidency and security agencies are not about to participate in illegality in order to preserve a drowning man.”
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