Senator Dino Melaye, who represented Kogi West in the 8th Senate, has described his former colleague now Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege, as a cheap revisionist who was trying to cover up his inglorious act of leading thugs to disrupt the proceedings of the Senate in 2018 and seized the mace.
Melaye, in a statement in reaction to comments said to have been made by Omo-Agege at a campaign rally in Asaba, Delta State last Thursday stated that there was no time in the four-year tenure of the 8th Senate that any attempt was made or plot hatched to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari as claimed by the Deputy Senate President.
He noted that the issue in question when Omo-Agege was suspended and he led thugs to disrupt the session of the upper chamber of the National Assembly while also seizing the mace was the order of election that should be followed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the 2019 polls as it was to be included in the Electoral Act.
“You could see how incoherent and incomprehensible Omo-Agege’s statement was. He said he was “de facto chairman of the Electoral Act”. I have never heard of such a position or responsibility in the National Assembly before. As of the time of the passage of the Electoral Act 2010 (amendment) Bill in 2017, Senator Suleiman Nazif was Chairman of the Senate Committee on INEC.
“The 8th Senate had passed the Electoral Act 2010 (amendment) on March 30, 2017, two years before the 2019 election and five days after the passage, the then Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, visited President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa to brief him on the provisions of the proposed law. The President expressed his happiness over the proposed changes. So also the INEC chairman, Prof Mahmoud Yakubu, on a visit to the Senate leader said he and the commission were satisfied with the changes.
“It was a year after that, that the House of Representatives passed their version of the Bill and reversed the order of elections contained in the one passed by the Senate. The concurrence given by the Senate to the House version was what Omo-Agege and his cohorts in the Senate said they were protesting against because they believed it would jeopardize the re-election plan of Buhari if the presidential election came last in the order.
“That Omo-Agege is now spinning that situation by claiming an imaginary impeachment plot to justify his perfidious act of bringing thugs to disrupt a senate session and also seize the mace is condemnable. A Senator leading thugs to attack the chambers and forcefully halt a parliamentary session in a fascist manner? It is an endorsement of anarchy and only a person like Omo-Agege can be beating his chest over that type of shameful act.
“To think that this character wants to be governor of Delta State is a sad commentary on our democracy. Anarchists and people who have no pretension to any belief in the tenets of democracy should not seek positions that require them to be democratically elected”, Melaye stated.
He advised Omo-Agege not to seek to rewrite history as the truth is well documented and history will surely not be kind to him for the ignoble role he played in the 2018 saga.
