Omo-Agege: Senate panel chair, Marafa, Ndume trade words

- Senator Ali Ndume said President Buhari would now know who is more loyal to him (Buhari) between him and Senator Kabiru Marafa

- The Senator was reacting to the claim by Marafa that the pro-Buhari group in the National Assembly, which Ndume is the leader, was not loyal to the president but were hypocrites

- Senator Ndume stated that he won’t be exchanging words with his colleague

Some senior lawmakers have threatened to expose their colleagues in the Parliamentary Support Group (PSG) that said it was working for President Muhammadu Buhari.

Punch reports that the senators, made this statement known in contrary to the claim of the PSG members

The chairman of the Senator Committee on Petroleum (Upstream) Senator Kabiru Marafa on Sunday, April 22, said efforts of the pro-Buhari group had been counter-productive to the success of the president.

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The Senate had two weeks ago proscribed the group but its members had rejected the proscription.

Marafa however challenged members of the PSG to come forward and express their grievances as they have planned, threatening that they would be exposed on their anti-Buhari activities.

''Let them come. We will confront them and tell them the truth to their faces. Let them call themselves anything but for God’s sake, they should not call themselves lovers or supporters of Muhammadu Buhari. They don’t support him; they don’t like him. That is the truth.

''The President never came out to say he needed anybody’s support. If you are talking about the elections sequence, he did not say he wanted somebody to support him; he only said he did not support certain clauses in the Electoral Act 2010 Amendment Bill.''

Describing members of the group as hypocrites, the lawmaker recalled that they betrayed Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress by working against their candidates for the Senate leadership in 2015.

He added: ''If they are truly lovers of Mr. President, why did they queue behind the Senate President that time? Where was Ali Ndume? He was part of the Like Minds. They rebelled against the party and against the President. Why are they now creating another body to say that they are supporting the President? When the President asked them to do something, they refused to do it.”

The lawmaker added, ''If Bukola Saraki is a devil today, who installed the devil in the chamber? Are they not the people? Are they not hypocrites? They are. If Bukola Saraki is a devil, who crowned the devil as the Senate President? And from the time Bukola Saraki ascended the presidency of the Senate to this time, what has changed?”

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Senator Ali Ndume, however, said Buhari would now know who was more loyal to him (President) between him and Marafa.

According to him, ''I don’t want to take issues with Marafa. He is a senator and I am a senator but that is not to say that we are all the same.ý All animals are equal but some are more equal than the others. The good thing about this is that Buhari himself knows me, knows Marafa; and he knows who is Marafa and who is Ndume.

''If at the beginning I was not with Buhari and now I am with him, and then he was with Buhari and now he is with Saraki, which one is better? ýLet us agree with what he said: at the beginning I was not with Buhari and I have now realised that Buhari is good and decided to be with him. But he was with Buhari and now, because he was given Petroleum Downstream (committee to head), he is now a defender of Saraki.

''The good thing is that Buhari knows me more than Marafa because I only met Marafa in the 7th Senate but I have been with Buhari since 2002. I only knew Marafa in 2011.''

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory on Thursday, April 19, has ordered the Nigeria Police Force and the state Security Service and the attorney general of the federation not to arrest a senator, Ovie Omo-Agege.

Omo-Agege’s lawyers approached the court on Thursday, April 19 seeking an interim injunction against further arrest or detention of the senator.

The team of lawyers led by Aliyu Umar, a Senior Avocate of Nigeria, asked for court’s protection for the embattled senator pending determination of a fundamental human rights case brought against the respondents.

EXCLUSIVE: Be patient with President Buhari, Femi Adesina tells Nigerians - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit.ng