General Editor, TAIWO ADISA, reports that the sack of Senator Ali Ndume as Senate Chief Whip last week has only returned him to a familiar path of controversy, even as he writes that the senator representing Borno South appears unruffled by the unfriendly fire.
Senator Ali Ndume, the senator representing Borno South senatorial district, woke up on January 10, 2017 as the Senate Majority Leader. But at the close of work that day, he had reverted to a floor member of the Senate. He oozed power as a close confidant of the then president of the Senate, Bukola Saraki. He had got the position in appreciation of his loyalty to the ‘Like Minds Senators’ who stood by Senator Saraki in the tortuous journey to attaining the Senate Presidency on June 9, 2015. The Like Minds Senators, the group led by Saraki, of which Ndume was a leading member, had staged a ‘coup de grace’ against the hierarchy of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its core loyalists in the Senate named the Senate Unity Forum (SUF) in the struggle for the control of the 8th Senate.
Saraki, backed by the Like Minds Senators, had mounted a spirited campaign for the Senate presidency against the wishes of the leadership of the ruling APC, which was in favour of Senator Ahmad Lawan. Ndume got the juicy position of Senate Leader in appreciation of his resolute support for Saraki, who had outsmarted leaders of his party to nick the Senate presidency in June 2015. Every odd had been staked against a Saraki Senate presidency by the APC ahead of the convocation of the Senate that year. But Ndume and the Like Minds bonded together and delivered the fatal blow that made Saraki the Senate President on June 9, 2015.
Saraki, in the eyes of the APC, committed further fouls by making Ndume Senate Leader. The party had, in trying to come to terms with its defeat by Saraki’s Like Minds Senators, named Senator Ahmad Lawal as the preferred Senate leader. The communication was, however, ignored by Saraki, who announced that a majority of the APC lawmakers in the chamber had earlier communicated their preference for Ndume as Senate leader.
So, from June 2015 till late December 2016, Ndume and Saraki enjoyed a chubby relationship. Ndume called the shots as the leader of Senate’s business. He was the official number three man, who had the ears of the presiding officer. The minds were seen to be working alike until the bubble burst in January 2017. That was when Ndume, in trying to play the role of the political leader of Borno State decided to side with the then acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu. President Muhammadu Buhari had presented Magu to the Senate for confirmation but the nomination was rejected. The president repeated the nomination months after, claiming that he had investigated the issues that knocked the nominee out in the first instance. But the Senate came to the same conclusion it reached earlier after it received adverse security reports on the candidate from the Department of State Services. Senators went into closed session and deliberated on the matter. They, in fact, concluded that Magu should be denied confirmation.
But Ndume chose to differ with his clan. Probably forgetting that the Senate is a club and that you either belong to the club or you are out of it, he visited the Presidential Villa and granted an interview denying the rejection of Magu by the Senate chamber. The chamber saw his interview as not just washing the dirty linen in the open but wrestling with the same class that had protected him against the claws of the APC and the presidency.
So, on January 10, 2017, the APC caucus in the Senate submitted a letter to the president of the Senate to indicate the removal of Ndume as Senate Leader. The decision paved the way for Dr Ahmad Lawan to assume the position, something that bodes well with the thinking of the leadership of the APC. Ndume, however, expressed shock at the decision, declaring that his colleagues removed him without an opportunity to defend himself. But the matter did not end there, Ndume was to suffer a six month suspension following a motion he moved on the floor of the Senate which was considered speculative and an affront on the privileges of the Senators.
He spoke in an interview about his removal and suspension thus: “My colleagues signed for my removal as the leader but none of them confronted me with any allegation. I was suspended without being allowed to defend myself on any allegation. The only thing that I did was that I called the attention of the Senate, coming under Order 14 and 15, which has to do with individual privilege, to the issues in the public domain which touched on the integrity of the Senate that should be investigated.
“One of them was an allegation that the Senate was on vengeance mission against the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service because he impounded the bullet-proof cars allegedly imported by a principal officer of the Senate. The second issue was that of Senator Dino Melaye’s educational qualification. Both issues were widely published by print and electronic media.”
Ndume said his travails stemmed from his insistence that the Senate stick to its standard procedures and practice and that Magu should have been presented to the floor for a confirmation hearing, after which he would have been rejected.
“In the case of Magu, that was not done. We only had a closed-door session and when we emerged the Senate spokesperson claimed that he had been rejected. I had to set the record straight by saying we never rejected the nominee. This is because you don’t accept or reject a nominee at a closed session,” he added.
However, after serving out his suspension, Ndume was able to overcome his challenges in the 8th Senate to return to the chamber in the 9th and the current 10th Senate. In the process leading to the election of the principal officers of the 10th Senate, Ndume, like it happened in 2015, sided with the winning candidate. He was on the side of Senator Godswill Akpabio, just as he backed Saraki in the 8th Senate. Akpabio won the election and rewarded Ndume with the position of Senate Chief Whip and Vice Chairman, Committee on Appropriation.
Nine years after his ordeal, which earned him a suspension from the Senate in 2015, Ndume again faced another round of fire from his colleagues in the 10th Assembly. The Borno senator had stoked the fire and earned the ire of his colleagues on Wednesday, July 10, when he told newsmen that President Bola Tinubu had been caged in the Presidential Villa. He said that the president was not in touch with the happenings in the polity and was doing nothing to mitigate the security crisis and food security challenges facing Nigerians. He said that Nigerians were angry with the president over his “failure” to tackle the challenges of poverty, insecurity, hunger, among others.
Ndume had said: “Mr. President is not in the picture of what is happening outside the Villa. He has been fenced off and caged. So, many of us won’t go through the backdoor to engage him. Now they have stopped him from talking and he doesn’t have public affairs managers, except that his spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, who writes press statements. Nigerians are getting very angry.
“The government is not doing anything about the food scarcity and it needs to do something urgently. We don’t have food reserve. There is unavailability of food. Food crisis is the worst crisis that any nation can encounter. If we add that to security crisis, it will be severe.
“The president should wake up; it seems he isn’t in the picture of what is happening because he has been caged off. He has been fenced off by plutocrats. He should open his doors and meet those who will tell him the truth. Unfortunately, the people who will tell him the truth won’t struggle to meet him. I am very worried not only for the president himself but myself.”
He said in another interview that even ministers were finding it hard to access the president. He added: “The major problem with this government is that its doors are closed, to the extent that even some ministers cannot see the President, not to mention members of the National Assembly, who do not have the opportunity to meet with him and discuss the issues affecting their constituencies.”
Unfortunately for Ndume, he had taken over the role the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had abdicated in the last one year. Miffed by what it considered a poke from a toxic finger, the APC replied Ndume with bared fangs. By Wednesday, July 18, the Senate chamber was in receipt of a letter from the national chairman of the APC, Abdullahi Ganduje, and the national secretary, Senator Bashir Ajibola, which requested the removal of the Borno senator for making “hurtful” statements. The party equally advised Ndume to feel free to leave the ruling party and join any of the opposition parties
The party wrote: “You have been making uncouth and rabid outbursts against the government before the international community which is not only harmful to the government’s image but its effort to bring in Foreign Direct Investments. We are of the opinion that Mohammed Tahir Monguno should immediately replace Senator Ali Ndume who is bent on bringing down the country as the majority whip of the Senate.”
Akpabio immediately went to work against his ally and effected his replacement with a fellow Borno Senator, Monguno. Ndume was also stripped of his role as vice chairman, Committee on Appropriation and moved to the Committee on Tourism, a position he has since rejected.
Notwithstanding the retaliatory attack on him by the APC hierarchy, Ndume appeared unruffled. He told newsmen days after his sack that he would continue to speak out against government.
He said: “I am a democrat and a realist, and someone who always says the truth no matter whose Ox is gored. According to former US President, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt: “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise, he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
It appears clear that despite the punishment inflicted on the voluble Borno Senator, the last has not been heard from him as far as the affairs of the 10th Senate are concerned.
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