The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream) Senator Kabiru Marafa, has accused Senator Ali Ndume, and Senator Abdullahi Adamu of working against President Muhammadu Buhari in the Senate.
This is coming as the Senate last week proscribed the Parliamentary Support Group. a pro-Buhari support group in the senate, for its stand against the amendment to Electoral Act.
While members of the proscribed group who are mostly senior lawmakers vowed to challenge the ban on the activities of the group by the leadership of the Senate, Marafa, has also threatened to expose their alleged anti-Buhari activities.
Senator Marafa is a member of the Like Minds Group that saw to the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki as Senate President.
According to Marafa, likes of Ndume and Adamu never supported President Buhari because they don’t like him. 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 said while the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the President chose the current Majority Leader, Senator Ahmad Lawan, to be the Senate President, Adamu and Ndume rooted for Senator Bukola Saraki who later became the Senate President.
He noted that those loyal to the APC and Buhari were members of the Senate Unity Forum, Adamu and Ndume had pitted their tents with the pro-Saraki’s Like Minds Senators. He added that it was later that both of them and several others “defected” from the LMS to SUF.
“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?”
Responding, Ndume said Buhari would now know who was more loyal to him (President) between him and Marafa.
He said, “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.”
