A leading pro-democracy and non-governmental body, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has cautioned All Progressive Congress (APC) Senators “not to allow unbridled quest and unrestrained cravings to unseat Senate leadership to lead to the invitation of military coups.”

The rights group cautioned the different divides within the Senate, made up largely of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling APC to stop over-heating the polity over the cross carpeting of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, from APC to PDP alongside other erstwhile APC – elected legislators who recently left their party for the opposition PDP.

HURIWA recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari, just before embarking on the recent 10-days medical vacation to the United Kingdom met some APC Senators in the Presidential Villa accompanied by the National leadership of the All progressives Congress just as the participants told State House reporters that they will take action within their powers to ensure that Saraki relinquished his seat which the National Chairman of APC dramatically described as the crown of his political party.

HURIWA condemned as “outrageous and an indirect invitation to chaos and anarchy which may motivate over-ambitious soldiers to destroy democracy, the speculated plots by some aggrieved APC Senators loyal to President Buhari, who are said to be planning the illegal reconvening of the Senate Chambers this week.”

The group in a media statement authorised by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, called for circumspection on the part of the President and the APC Senators.

Urging for calm and respect to the constitutional provisions regarding the separation of powers, the rights group stated that any extralegal move by APC Senators to forcefully reconvene the Senate which is on two months recess amounts to a direct threat to constitutional democracy and would make Nigeria's constitutional democracy vulnerable to the attacks of politically ambitious elements in the military institutions who may be tempted to strike and to destabilise the fragile and young civil rule that all patriots have worked resolutely to institutionalise.

Said HURIWA: “We are worried by the avalanche of news reports regarding the plots by some renegade senators to invade the hallowed chambers of the Senate without lawful authorisation by the legally constituted hierarchy of the upper chambers, with the clandestine motive to overthrow the leadership of Dr. Bukola Saraki the Senate President and his Deputy professor Ike Ekweremadu. We are worried by the naked show of crude force by the national chairman of APC and some senators who against all known laws and legislative conventions have threatened to forcefully reopen the Senate chambers so as to enable the renegade senators to institute a regime change following the threats by the presidency and the All Progressives Congress to take all measures to restore the Senate leadership to the party that produced the president which, is APC. Any attempt outside rule 12 of the Senate Rule granting powers to reconvene from recess of the Senate in the hands of the presiding officers of Senate President and his Deputy, would amount to high treason which has the potential of destabilising civil rule.”

Update news