Impeachment: Anti-Jonathan senators meet today

The 63 senators who had signed up to remove President Goodluck Jonathan will meet on Monday (today) evening to perfect their   strategy for making it a reality.

One of the coordinators of the impeachment plan,who made this known to our correspondent in Abuja on Sunday, said the agenda of the meeting would centre on how to handle the case on the floor of the Senate.

But the senator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not disclose the venue of the meeting for security reasons.



He said, “All of us will meet tomorrow (Monday) evening to discuss when we are going to move the motion on the floor of the Senate. We have an appreciable number already and I believe that more people will join when they see the seriousness with which we are going about it.

“Some of our colleagues were saying that we don’t have the will to move it (impeachment motion) on the floor. We will soon execute our plans because it is in the best interest of all Nigerians”

Already, the senator representing Yobe South Senatorial District in the upper chamber, Alkali Jajere, and his colleague from Niger North, Ibrahim Musa, have explained their involvement in the planned impeachment moves.

The two senators, in separate interviews on Sunday, said they signed up for the impeachment because of their conviction that Jonathan had engaged in a series of constitutional breaches.

Jajere alleged that the poor handling of the insurgency in the North-East    by the Jonathan administration despite huge sums of money being voted for the military, was deliberate.

He said, “Are we going to wait and continue to tolerate a leader who, cannot stop the daily physical and psychological torture of people in the North-East. The insurgency in the zone is threatening the corporate existence of Nigeria and the earlier we act, the better.’’

Also, Musa alleged that Jonathan government’s “insincerity” in tackling the economic crisis facing   the country was enough grounds to initiate an impeachment move against him.

He said, “The President has been breaching the constitution over the years and we have tolerated it enough. This government has not been implementing the budget and that is why we are having problems with our economy.”

One of the arrowheads of the move to remove Jonathan, on Thursday, showed our correspondent the list containing the signatures of 63 senators.

The source said eight Peoples Democratic Party senators were among the signatories to the planned impeachment notice. There are 109 lawmakers in the Senate.

An All Progressives Congress senator from the North-West, who asked not to be named, told our correspondent that the lawmakers’ major grouse against the President was the manner he had been handling the economic and political affairs of the country.

The senator cited poor implementation of the national budget since 2011, alleged high level of corruption and “gross disregard”   for the legislature at both the federal and state levels as some of the reasons they were angry with Jonathan.