Senator
Peter Nwaoboshi, a lawyer, was the political adviser to former Delta
State Governor James Ibori and the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic
Party, PDP, in the state. He currently represents Delta North in the
Senate.
In this interview, he speaks on how Senator Bukola Saraki
emerged as Senate President and the alleged forged 2015 Ruling of the
parliament, among other issues.
How are you settling down as a senator especially as you are coming from the other side of the divide?
I
have a mission. When I was asking my people to vote for me, I believed I
was sufficiently equipped to represent them at the Senate having served
at various levels in the executive arm of government and party
hierarchy. I was a member of Unity Party of Nigeria, Awolowo group,
where I was the state youth leader. I formed the UPN youth wing in
Bendel State. I was the political secretary to Prof Ambrose Ali, the
then governor of Bendel State. I was the first secretary of the PDP in
Delta State.
Later I became the political adviser to Governor
Ibori and then his commissioner for agriculture, and, as time went on,
his commissioner for special duties in charge of Abuja. So I have been
both in the executive and in the party hierarchy , but I have never been
in the legislature. So, basically, this is my first time.
I have
a mission for my people and I am able to cope because of my legal
background. As a lawyer of over 25years standing and also a student of
history, I have been in active politics for over 35years. So the Senate
is a very familiar terrain for me.
Did you envisage the turbulence in the Senate prior to your coming here?
Any
politician who says he did not expect what happened on the 9th of June
is not worth his onion. In a situation where the two parties are almost
equal and you see more than one contestant coming from a political
party, you would expect certain things to happen.
First, you call
us opposition party, and I keep on saying the APC mismanaged the issue.
You are telling an opposition party, ‘this is where I am going’, you
want the opposition party to join you? It is a simple logic. You saw two
people contesting and you say, ‘okay I am supporting this,’ and you
call the other person the opposition, what do you expect the opposition
to do? You call us opposition party; so, ordinarily, what you should
expect is that the opposition party would go to the other side and vote.
But for some of us who believe in integrity and also in order to keep
our names, the PDP would have taken the Senate President and the Deputy
Senate President on that day and nothing would have happened.
How?
We
had 49 Senators at the inauguration, they had about 20; the quorum is
one third, the Constitution is very clear on that. What is the quorum?
Go and read the Constitution. Forget about Senate Rule, which is not the
ground norm. The Constitution is the ground norm; we had formed the
quorum and by the quorum which we had formed which is one third, and the
Constitution says any law, that is inconsistent with any provision of
the Constitution, shall, to the extent of its inconsistency, be declared
null and void, we could have taken the Senate President.
There
was already a quorum, there was already a proclamation by the President
of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as provided for by the Constitution
and the proclamation did not just proclaim the National Assembly, it
said by 10am, it was timed. The President did not withdraw the
proclamation. And so, if we had decided to vote that day, we would have
got the Senate President, we would have also got the Deputy Senate
President and there is nothing you can do because, to remove them, you
need two third.
And all we needed to do was sit down, share
everything in the Senate among the 49 of us and then come to the Senate
thereafter and wait for you to do whatever you want to do; and the truth
is that you cannot do anything. By now, APC would not be talking, they
would not be making all the noise they are making. I know many of my
friends who are now regretting that we could have done it. We had the
opportunity, but we said ‘just take’ and instead of them thanking us,
somebody is saying ‘they forged the Senate Rule’. What is forgery? Where
is the original document? You must have an original document to forge
another.
I just read some lawyers talking. I don’t know where
they read their law. Where is the original document of the Senate Rule
2015 that was forged? If you started a bill today in the 7th Senate and
you cannot complete it before the expiration of the Assembly, you will
start denovo. Everything in the 7th Senate is gone, we start denovo;
which means we can now regulate our proceedings by the virtue of Section
60 to start that bill the way we want to pass it. You are talking about
forgery. Where is the original document that was forged? You are
talking about two thousand and something rule, of what Assembly? I have
asked people about the original that was forged. Where is the 2015 Rule
that was forged? You must have an original document. If you say my
certificate was forged, it means I have a certificate, but you now
forged it. I was asking my friend, Senator Marafa, he said there is no
rule, but you are in court to squash a rule. If there is no rule, why
did you go to court? What is your prayer in court?
There was an
issue raised by one of the senators, that there was an error in the 2015
Senate Rule, but that when they discovered it, they went and produced
another one correcting that error.
When the PDP was in the
majority in the National Assembly, we heard about party supremacy which
was observed in breach and sometimes followed to the letter. Now APC is
insisting on the the supremacy of the party and PDP is somehow thwarting
that.
What is the supremacy of the party? Let me know, which of
them? For instance, before the election, there was a straw election
through which some people emerged. The party showed through its body
language and even through voting that this is where they were going. Was
it not normal in the red chamber for everybody at least to toe that
line to show that actually the party in the majority should have its
way? Have you ever seen throughout the 16 years of PDP where PDP
presented two candidates for an election? It boils down to carelessness
and lack of administrative acumen on the part of the APC.
Let me
give you an example; when Tambuwal was elected against what the PDP
wanted, did you hear us make noise? We kept quiet, we planned around
him. He was romancing with the opposition elements, but we had around
him people who were checking him, and so he was cautious. He knew we
were in the majority, he never defected until days to the election.
When
Evans Enwerem emerged as the Senate President as against the popular
wish of the senators for Chuba Okadigbo, we didn’t just start shouting
for Nigerians to know that we were shouting, senators worked around and
removed Enwerem. In Ibori’s administration, the late Senator Pius
Ewherido, in 199I, was the state PDP secretary. We wanted one Megbiro to
be the Speaker and we got to the floor of the House. The opposition,
led by Ewherido, manouvred and got their man elected. After the first
one, the second one, they impeached our own Speaker. He who fights and
runs away lives to fight another day.
As political adviser, I
knew what to do. I organized our people and, within one month, we
overthrew their Speaker in a democratic form. Even Ewherido, by 2 in the
morning, I showed him the signatures and I asked, ‘ Are you joining
us’? He had to sign. After we got two thirds, we then sent for the
Deputy Speaker to come and meet us in the VIP Guest House and he came
and I showed him. The governor was sitting and I said ‘these are the
signatories, are you ready to join us or we impeach you tomorrow as the
Deputy Speaker?’ He joined us.
By making noise, APC is only
toughening us and supporters of Senate President Saraki and also making
people to think that there must be something behind their wanting to
have the Senate presidency at all costs; there is something really that
eyes are not seeing. You want us to be put in your pocket? Nobody will
allow it at this age. Where I am going is nearer than where I am coming
from; 58 plus and you want somebody to dictate from his parlour to me?
Is the cash crunch the nation is experiencing not affecting the National Assembly?
The
National Assembly is on the firstline charge. There is nobody that can
strangulate the National Assembly; rather it is the National Assembly
that can strangulate people. If you follow democracy, the strongest arm
of any democratic setting is the parliament. Nobody, no arm of
government can intimidate the legislature.
If you look at the Senate President, it appears he is not settled, he is not comfortable. Is he not in charge yet?
He
is a very strong hearted man. The man knows he has the support of the
people, he demonstrated it. Senator Marafa was shouting in the
newspapers, ‘when we resume, heavens will fall, we will remove him’; you
heard it. Then we came that day, instead of moving the removal motion,
81 Senators signed the vote expressing confidence in the leadership of
Saraki. That is a demonstration of ‘I am in charge’. The only people who
can remove him is us. The President cannot remove him, APC cannot
remove him, it is only the day that 73 senators sign that he will go.
You are not likely to get it in this 8th Assembly. So, how are you going
to get it unless you are going to kill him? If you arrest him today,
Ekweremadu will continue as Senate President. So where are you running
to? Even if you remove him via arrest and put him in prison, he is still
our Senate President until we impeach him.
