APGA calls on Senator Abaribe to vacate seat after defection to ADC, urging Senate to enforce constitutional provisions.
Abia State chapter of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), has appealed to the Senate not to allow Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe to “abscond” with the mandate of the party to the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
Making the appeal during a press briefing in Umuahia, on Thursday, the leadership of Abia APGA also called on Abaribe to “honourably vacate his seat” rather than risk national disgrace.
“So, my advice to him is to honourably vacate his seat, instead of having the seat declared vacant by the National Assembly, that would be the height of national embarrassment and we wouldn’t want him to be embarrassed,” said Hon. Obinna Ichite, the leader of APGA in Abia.
He was joined by the state party chairman, Sunday Onukwubiri, and the state Publicity Secretary, Chukwuemeka Nwokoro at the media event, precipitated by Abaribe’s recent defection from APGA to ADC on the floor of the senate.
But Abaribe has maintained that the party sacked him and also described as insulting, the accusation by APGA that he was sourcing for people to write a forged sack letter for him.
Ichite noted that Abia South Senatorial electorate willingly gave the Senator their mandate on APGA’s platform but regretted that Abaribe defected to another party without consulting them.
“There was nothing like ADC when the people of Abia South gave him the mandate. But unfortunately he decided to abscond with the mandate of the people without consulting the people that gave him the platform and, of course, the people who gave him the mandate,” Ichite said.
Condemning the action of the Senator, Ichite, a former lawmaker, who represented Aba South State Constituency in the Abia State House of Assembly, said, “Abaribe cannot take the mandate of a people and go to wherever it pleases him, because it is not a personal property.”
He, therefore, urged the Senate to enforce provisions of Section 68(1)(g) of the 1999 constitution which provided that a legislator was required to vacate his seat if he defected from the political party that sponsored his election, unless the party was engulfed in internal crisis.
However, he contended that since APGA was cisis-free, it. Was important to declare his seat vacant to give “justice to the people who stood under the sun to elect the senator on a particular platform.”
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