FG planning to imprison us, say Saraki, Ekweremadu

Senate President Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu, deputy senate president, have raised the alarm over the alleged plan of the federal government to incarcerate them.

In a statement on Friday, Yusuph Olaniyonu and Uche Anichukwu, their media aides, the legislators said this is part of the plot to remove them from office.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) have been mounting pressure on Saraki to step down for defecting to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

But the senate president has vowed not to relinquish power except two-thirds of the senate removes him.

In the statement, Saraki and Ekweremadu alleged that the presidency had set up a panel to indict them over the invasion of the national assembly by operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS).

“The presidency has today constituted a closet panel to review the report and submit a final recommendation. The mandate of this closet panel, the two legislators stated, is to turn facts on the head and blame the invasion of the national assembly on the two leaders of the red chamber of the national assembly, who will then be presented as having worked in tandem with the sacked director-general of the DSS, Mallam Lawal Daura to stage the parliamentary security breach,” the statement read.

“We have been reliably informed that instead of the presidency to set up a public inquiry or judicial commission to probe last Tuesday’s early morning Invasion of the national assembly as being demanded by the general public, they have commenced a process of manipulation and fabrication.

“The presidency has set up a closet panel, which would work to a predetermined conclusion in which they will now claim that the senate president and the deputy senate president worked in collusion with ex-DG of DSS, Lawal Daura to stage the invasion.

“They want to shield the fact that the previous night before the invasion and up till the early hours of Tuesday, there was a meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC) senators and that the plan was for them to be moved in a coaster bus into the National Assembly complex later that morning for them to purportedly remove us and select a new senate president and deputy senate president.

“The presiding officers added that they have also uncovered a sinister plot in which the government plans to use the anti-graft and security agencies to incarcerate them and some members of their families from next week, all in a bid to break their will and effect their removal.”

The senate presiding officers said the blockade of the national assembly must be probed through an independent judicial commission of inquiry.