- Senators loyal to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu are reportedly planning to impose sanctions on Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume, including removing him as Chief Whip and suspending him
- The Concerned Northern Forum (CNF) released a statement supporting Ndume, praising him for voicing the concerns of average Nigerians facing severe economic hardship due to the removal of fuel subsidies and other unpopular policies
Senators loyal to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu are reportedly planning to impose sanctions on Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume (APC, Borno South) following his recent critical comments about the President. Sources within the National Assembly revealed on Tuesday that the pro-Tinubu senators aim to remove Ndume from his position as the Chief Whip of the Senate and suspend him, similar to the recent suspension of Senator Abdul Ningi (PDP, Bauchi Central).
In March, Ningi, a ranking senator from the North, was suspended for three months for alleging in a BBC Hausa interview that N3.7 trillion in the 2024 national budget was not allocated to any specific projects or locations.
Ndume recently expressed concerns about President Tinubu’s awareness of the country’s issues, stating, “Mr. President is not in the picture of what is happening outside the Villa. He has been fenced off and caged. So many of us won’t go through the backdoor to engage him. Now, they have stopped him from talking, and he doesn’t have public affairs managers, except his spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, who writes press statements. Nigerians are getting very angry. The government is not doing anything about the food scarcity, and it needs to do something urgently. We don’t have food reserves. There is an unavailability of food. The food crisis is the worst crisis that any nation can encounter. If we add that to the security crisis, it will be severe.”
These remarks sparked a backlash from the pro-Tinubu camp, with Senator Sunday Karimi (Kogi West) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) condemning Ndume’s statement as derogatory.
According to sources, three of the four senators leading the charge to suspend Ndume and remove him as Chief Whip are from the South West (Ekiti, Ogun, and Lagos), with another senator from Kogi also involved. Senate President Godswill Akpabio is reportedly in a difficult position, given that Ndume was the Director-General of the Stability Group that helped secure Akpabio’s position as Senate President in June 2023.
Some Northern senators are reportedly waiting for the issue to be formally raised in plenary before taking a stance. A source noted, “But of course, you know the Northern Senators will rise against another plan to destabilize their caucus, barely a few months after Ningi was suspended.”
Meanwhile, the Concerned Northern Forum (CNF), represented by Mallam Abdulkadir Kura, released a statement on Tuesday supporting Ndume. The statement read, “It is on record that Ndume is a critical stakeholder of the ruling APC and a close ally of President Tinubu. Therefore, if he can take such a bold step in telling the truth about the economic and social reality, then the Southern Borno Senator must be celebrated by all and sundry. So we stand by him.”
The CNF praised Ndume for voicing the concerns of average Nigerians facing severe economic hardship due to the removal of fuel subsidies and other unpopular policies. They highlighted that Ndume has a history of challenging federal government policies, which has previously led to positive changes.
“This is not the first time Senator Ndume has criticized or challenged federal government policies. He consistently did so during the past administrations of Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari. Such criticisms led to positive changes by the listening governments at that time,” the statement added.
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