Senate Presidency: No gang-up with PDP, only political evangelism, says Melaye

Tuesday, June 16, 2015 0
Category: Nigerian National News

Senator Dino Melaye has denied that he and some members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) worked with opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to ensure the emergence of Bukola Saraki as the senate president.

Speaking on Tuesday, Melaye said that what he and other Saraki supporters did was to lobby the PDP to get enough votes for their party. According to him, rather than being castigated, he and other members should be praised for how they negotiated the emergence of an APC senate president because the opposition could have taken the slot.


“What we did was to carry out a political evangelism because there was no way we could have gotten what we were after without talking with the PDP senators. But we did not speak with them at all until after they had already decided to support Senator Saraki.”

Melaye accused the Unity Forum senators who went for the APC meeting at the International Conference Centre (ICC) of costing the party the position of the deputy senate president which was snapped up by the PDP’s Senator Ike Ekweremadu.

According to him, if the senators had taken up their places in the hallowed chambers on the fateful day, the position would have gone to an APC member.

‘They cost us the deputy senate president position because they were not there.”

He also shut down arguments that very few APC senators were in the Upper Chambers at the time of voting last Tuesday. According to him, not fewer than 20 APC senators were in the chambers.

“There were 20 APC senators in the house. I can point them out. According to the senate rules, only a third of the House is needed to form a quorum and we were more than that in the House. So, all we did was perfectly constitutional.”

Melaye also denied that he and his co-supporters of Saraki got any text message from the APC to attend the meeting.

“We did not get any text message inviting us to the meeting. So, we chose to follow the proclamation of the president in line with the provisions of the constitution. If the president had indeed called the meeting with party members, it would not have been held at the ICC. I heard that it held in a boys’ quarter at the Centre, a side hall.

“Besides, those few who received the test told us it came from somebody without a portfolio, and having received such a text message before when the Vice President allegedly called a meeting, only to wait for hours without him coming, they decided to ignore it.”


In a related vein, Melaye denied posting pictures of an inauguration party he threw after being sworn in as a senator in the 8th National Assembly. According to him, photos of champagne bottles branded in his name, his palatial bedroom and his exotic automobiles were released by someone just to spite him.

“I do not drink or smoke so why would I have myself branded on champagne bottles?” he queried. “I did not do any of those things. There is no truth in all these. Everybody knows that I like cars. It is also not a crime to be wealthy. Nobody can say that I got those things through fraud because I have never taken any government contract. Let anybody who knows differently come out and say it,” he challenged.

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