The Senator Ahmad Lawan for Ninth Senate President Group has intensified its consultations with senators-elect across party lines through telephone calls at the weekend. This is coming in the wake of the 43 PDP senators-elect’s agreement to work as a team towards the election of presiding officers of the ninth Senate in June.
Sources close to Lawan, a strong contender for the 9th Senate presidency, told correspondent that the Lawan group made telephone calls during the Easter break to the senators-elect about the project at hand. A source, who is a ranking APC senator from North-central zone, said the Lawan group used the Easter break to sensitise the senators-elect about the ambition of Lawan.
His words: “We worked on the phone and chatted individually with our colleagues about the Lawan project and we had fruitful discussions and reasonable feedback. “As you may know, most of the senators-elect are back to their various senatorial districts for the Easter break and it is just ideal for us to ensure that the Lawan for 9th Senate president is kept in the front burner through being in constant touch with our colleagues and thus we have done successfully through telephone calls in the last three days.”
urtherlearnt that through the phone calls to senators-elect across party lines, the Lawan group was able to get useful feedbacks from the legislators-elect about the viability of the project. The source added that the group was not taking the public endorsement of Senator Lawan for granted. “We’ll continue to engage all stakeholders, including opposition party senators-elect with a view to getting the anticipated support from our fellow senators-elect.”
In a related development, the leadership of PDP has said its senators-elect should remain focused ahead of the June inauguration of the ninth Senate. The Prince Uche Secondus-led National Working Committee (NWC) of the PDP had last week met its senators-elect in Abuja on the need for the legislators-elect to have sincerity of purpose in the ninth Senate. A ranking PDP senator from the South-east told correspondent that the party leadership told the legislators-elect that their rank should be formidable. The senators-elect were reportedly told not to allow the ambition of any ranking senator or senators for the office of Senate president distract them from the onerous task ahead of them.
“We were told in clear terms that we should remain as one as PDP senators-elect and should not involve ourselves in any politicking whatsoever for the ninth Senate leadership but to be a solid opposition group ready to work for a vibrant upper legislative chamber,” he said. The ranking senator also confirmed that Lawan and former Senate leader, Senator Ali Ndume, had reached out to him as well as other PDP senators-elect about their ambition to be ninth Senate president.
“We will continue to listen to all gladiators as we have information that one or two other ranking Senators may also join the race. You know we still have about six or seven weeks before the Ninth National Assembly is inaugurated and anything can still happen before then,” he further said.
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