The Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA) says it has uncovered a grand and outrageous plan by a splinter of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) leadership to blackmail the President of the Senate, Senator Bukola Saraki and the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu into submission.

The rights group said in a statement issued late yesterday in Abuja and signed by the national Coordinator Emanuel Onwubiko: “We have it on good authority that finishing touches were put on the plan at the Abuja home of a high profile APC leader from the South West.

“Seeing no legal means to kicking the Senate leadership out, the plan now is includes forgery of all manners of documents, manipulated audio and audio-visual materials, and the importation of a professional female blackmailer from the USA, etc. to coerce the Senate helmsmen into submission.

“HURIWA denounces in the strongest terms the emerging erosion of the independence of the National Assembly, and worst of all, the resort to cheap blackmail.

“We therefore call on Nigerians to be on the lookout for the political cum media terrorism as it unfolds, but regard them for what they are- a cheap blackmail.

“Meanwhile, HURIWA recalls that the presiding officers of the Senate and House of Representatives were democratically elected in the full glare of Nigerians. Although there is an obvious division and leadership tussles in the APC, the ruling party cannot continue to hold Nigerians to ransom over its domestic squabbles.

“Indeed, the least Nigerians expected of the APC leadership is to cooperate with the National Assembly leadership to deliver to Nigerians the change the party promised Nigerians.

“It is also appropriate to remind the APC leadership that it rode to power on the wings of free democratic environment and the sanctity of the ballot box.

“If the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former President Goodluck Jonathan could congratulate President Mohammdu Buhari and the APC as well as hand government to them without any hesitance whatsoever, we see no good reason some elements in the APC have refused to accept the leadership, which majority of members of the National Assembly have freely chosen for themselves in accordance with the 1999 Constitution.

“If APC lawmakers emerged Speakers of the Benue and Plateau States Houses of Assembly where the PDP are in the majority; HURIWA sees no reason a Deputy Senate President of PDP extraction transparently and constitutionally elected by members of both parties cannot be acceptable to a section of the APC leadership.

“Furthermore, since the APC national leadership, President Muhammadu Buhari, and the APC Caucus in the House of Representatives hailed the defection of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal’s to the APC with PDP’s speakership mandate in 2014; and since there is nothing in our constitution that states that a presiding officer must come from the majority party, HURIWA sees no good reason some APC elements are hell-bent on pulling down the National Assembly and our democracy in pursuit of their selfish agenda.

“The emerging scenario is to say the least, most disappointing, unhealthy for democracy, and a betrayal of the mandate for change handed to the APC at the 2015 general elections.

“HURIWA calls on President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately restore sanity to the National Assembly by calling his party men and women to order, and protect the independence and stability of the legislature, which he inherited from the President Goodluck Jonathan Administration.”

•Photo shows Saraki and Ekweremadu.

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