Garba Musa Maidoki, the Senator representing Kebbi South Senatorial District, lamented the emergence of the 10th Senate Minority Leader, Senator Simon Mwadkwom, and other principal officers of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as the most fraudulent, saying all known processes had been cast into the wind.
In an interview with journalists following plenary, the lawmaker emphasised how they anticipated the anomaly and went to the party’s National Secretariat on Monday requesting a letter to be transmitted to the Senate President in their presence on the choice of principal officers, but they were ignored.
The lawmaker stated that they were told that the party had not finalised the list of principal officers, only to be disappointed to see that some senators had been nominated, despite his request to write a letter to the Senate.
He said: “We were at the PDP Secretariat yesterday and for them to tell us what we are going to do and we were told that nothing has been finalized. We asked the PDP secretariat that if nothing is finalized, please write a letter to the Senate telling them that we have not agreed on the leadership of the minority caucus.
“Unfortunately, those who were there refused to write this letter, either because they were aware or because they were culpable. We don’t have problems, two wrongs do not make it right.”
“This is most fraudulent, we were fenced out of the whole process.”
He, however, expressed his readiness to cooperate with the Senate to ensure that the nation moves forward, adding that “Nigeria is a project, and if it must work, they should be transparent in everything government.”
“I always tell people that I am an accidental politician because my people came to me without notice that I must contest.
“We have 36 out of the 50 Senators that are in the minority caucus and then we cannot even come together and agree who should lead us.
“I might not vote for you, but I should be able to know that you’re vying for something, and you should be able to know that even if I oppose, you will win. But to come to the Senate and just hear that some people have sat down and they have agreed that the thirty-six Senators have nominated minority leadership.
“I am not against them now that they have emerged, we are willing to join forces because there is no time to fight now.
“I never knew they were signing, nobody called me, nobody informed me even through an SMS. We have a minority caucus where we have been meeting regularly. The issue was never brought up,” he insisted.