Senate Minority Leader: Tambuwal’s bid suffers setback as group rejects him
Joel Oladele, Abuja
The bid of the immediate past governor of Sokoto State, Sen. Aminu Tambuwal
to emerge as the Minority Leader of the 10th Senate seems to be currently faced with stiff opposition as a group vowed never to support him.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) revolutionary political group, Concerned PDP League (CPDPL), said it will throw Its weight behind any other candidate presented by the party for the position except Tambuwal.
The Chairman of the group, Mr Daboikiabo Warmate, disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday that the group was not in support of Tambuwal, based on trust deficit he earned for himself when he was the Speaker of House of Representatives.
Recall that the PDP and its presidential candidate in the last election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and G-5 have been in fresh loggerheads over the minority leadership in the National Assembly, particularly the Senate.
While PDP and Atiku are rooting for Aminu Tambuwal representing Sokoto South at the Senate for the minority leadership seat, the G-5 is pushing for Senator Jarigbe Jarigbe representing Cross River North for the same position.
Warmate said that instead of Tambuwal, the position should rather be zoned to a state in the North-Central, precisely Plateau.
“That his ambition is dead in its imagination, how much more arrival; nevertheless, the past has caught up with him,” he said.
Warmate stated that Tambuwal had during his leadership as Speaker of the 8th House of Representatives given to him by the PDP, defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC), and by so doing, sowed a seed of trust deficit.
He expressed dissatisfaction over such an attitude, saying that the ambition of the former Sokoto governor would be a recipe and incentive for further disunity and crisis in the PDP.
“It is with great disappointment and shock to have read on the papers that Tambuwal, the former Governor of Sokoto State and PDP Governors Forum Chairman, wants to be the minority leader of the 10th Senate.
“Somebody that in 2014 took the House of Representatives Speakership we gave to him and defected to another party. This same person eventually came back to the party.
“Now, he wants to be the minority leader of the 10th Senate; we will not give support to you.
“Look, for many years, he was the PDP Governors Forum chairman, but could not speak against the suppression and sufferings of Nigerians,” Warmate said.
According to him, Tambuwal cannot be trusted the second time and does not have the needed courage to be the minority leader of the 10th Senate, judging from his antecedents.
He called for a mid-term convention to be followed by the dissolution of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party to give room for fresh ideas.
The group also urged the Acting National Chairman of the party, Amb. Umar Damagum, not to sign any letter introducing Tambuwal as the minority leader of the 10th Senate.
“The former PDP Governors Forum Chairman, performed woefully as a leader of the opposition party. No, enough is enough; PDP members cannot be used and dumped.
“It is PDP not Elite Democratic Party or Stakeholders Democratic Party, and that is what we want them to know.
“We will not allow members, leaders or any leader to use the party and dump it at will, no! That is unacceptable. We need to tell them the truth.”
He therefore commended the immediate past Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, for providing the needed opposition voice in the eight years of the APC Buhari-led Federal Government.
