Chairman, Senate Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs, Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe, has said that there is no truth in the speculations that the Presidency has initiated moves to change the leadership of the upper legislative assembly because it granted audience to the leaders of the breakaway faction of the Peoples Democratic Party.
Abaribe stated this while addressing National Assembly correspondents after plenary on Tuesday.
He said the senate leadership gave audience to some aggrieved members of the PDP because Senate President David Mark was informed that some senators and few other politicians from outside wanted to have an audience with them.
He said it was not true that the presidency was reaching out to some senators as a result of the incident, to sack the senate leadership.
“Let me say that all members of the seventh Senate continue to have explicit confidence in the leadership of the Senate. Whatever is going to lead to any other thing will come also from inside the Senate and I do not think that there is anything that would warrant any loss of confidence in the leadership,” he said.
He said the senate president had opposed the call for the convocation of Sovereign National Conference because the entire democratic institutions already in place would be dissolved if an SNC was to be convened but that he also changed his earlier position because he believed that the events in the country at the moment could only be resolved through dialogue.
He said, “The hallmark of a statesman is flexibility as against rigidity. Mark found that recent events in the polity called for a change of mind and he opted to toe that path instead holding on to his earlier position even when it defies reason.
“Let me say that the hallmark of a statesman is not to continue saying because you have said so and when you have better information and when circumstances on the ground have changed, you should not be able to change your mind.
“The Senate President did say that in view of all the things that are going on in the country at the moment and in view of the fact that there is a trend that looks like there is a need for us to talk to each other, there is need for conference.”
