You can't remove Ekweremadu - PDP tells APC Senators

The National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party has asked the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, to call the bluff of the All Progressives Congress senators who asked him to defect to their party in order to retain his seat. The APC senators, who are in the majority in the Senate, had asked Ekweremadu to defect from the PDP to the ruling party if he wants to continue to have their support. The majority senators said this after they had seamlessly removed the Senate Majority Leader, Ali Ndume, and replaced him with Ahmed Lawan. However, the PDP asked Ekweremadu, who is the highest political office-holder from the opposition party, not to be afraid of the APC. The PDP assured Ekweremadu that nothing would happen to him. The spokesperson for the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led Caretaker Committee of the PDP, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, said this in a statement in Abuja on Thursday. Adeyeye said it was wrong for Senator Kabiru Marafa of the APC to have called on Ekweremadu on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday to defect from the PDP to the ruling APC. Adeyeye said the call on Ekweremadu was unconstitutional and undemocratic. He said, “Our attention has been drawn to a statement credited to Senator Kabiru Marafa on the floor of the Nigerian Senate on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, in which he advised Senator Ike Ekweremadu to defect to the APC in order to remain as the Deputy Senate President. “This call is unconstitutional, undemocratic and, to say the least, unbecoming of Senator Marafa.” While calling on him to defect, Marafa had said, “I am using this medium to call on Ekweremadu to simply defect. Section 68(G) of the 1999 Constitution captures this.” But the PDP faction insisted that, "Senator Marafa or any other member of the APC has no power to make such demands on a member of the PDP.”