I wanted to impeach Ekweremadu —Ndume

The Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, on Thursday, caused a stir in the upper chamber when he revealed how he collected signatures of other senators to impeach the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, in the 7th Senate.

Ndume stated this while raising a point of order to draw the attention of the Senate to an “offensive report” published in The Nation newspaper of Thursday.

The newspaper’s report had alleged that 22 Northern senators who signed the vote of confidence passed in Senator Bukola Saraki leadership of the Senate, were working against the interest of President Muhammadu Buhari, in the red chamber.

Ndume said he contested the deputy senate president position with Ekweremadu on June 9, 2015 with the intention to win but had to accept his fate when the latter defeated him.

He said, “I personally still want to be senate president. I also believe that any of us will not mind to be the senate president. As for the deputy senate president, I contested against the deputy senate president. I did not contest with him to lose that election.

“I contested with him in order to win that election but it is God that gives power to whoever he wants. What ever happened on the 9th of June, my friend Ekweremadu became the deputy senate president.

“Let me say for the record and for those that were not in the 7th Senate, it is not something of pride, but I stand here to say, he is here, that I am the only person that attempted to impeach him.

“ I collected signatures in order to impeach him because of certain things which I explained and we discussed.

“Why I am taking us through all these is because the nation is watching us and this drama that is going on cannot continue because that is not why we are here and this leadership thing whether we like it or not, whether we change it or we maintain this one, only one person will be the senate president.

“I want to say something about an issue that has been lingering in this Senate and it is about to distort or take us away from the main reason why we are here.

“I said it before and I am still maintaining this position. Each and every one of us here that is elected as a senator is qualified to be the senate president by all standards but it only that out of the 109 of us, one has to be the senate president while another person has to be the deputy senate president. It so happened, that Senator Bukola Saraki is now our senate president.

“Senate leadership has gone beyond an individual. You cannot become the leader of the Senate when the senators are not ready to accept your leadership. If two-thirds of the senators say today that I am not the leader I am out.”