Senators loyal to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu are reportedly planning to sanction Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume for his recent critical remarks about the President.
Sources from the National Assembly told Daily Trust that pro-Tinubu senators plan to remove Ndume from his position as the Chief Whip of the Senate and potentially suspend him, similar to the earlier suspension of Senator Abdul Ningi.
Last week, Ndume commented to reporters at the National Assembly Complex, saying, “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 reserve. There is unavailability of food. Food crisis is the worst crisis that any nation can encounter. If we add that to security crisis, it will be severe.”
These statements sparked backlash from the pro-Tinubu camp, with Senator Sunday Karimi (Kogi West) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) criticizing Ndume’s comments as derogatory.
Sources indicate that three of the four senators pushing for Ndume’s suspension and removal as Chief Whip are from the South West—Ekiti, Ogun, and Lagos—along with a senator from Kogi.
Senate President Godswill Akpabio faces a dilemma, as Ndume was instrumental in his election as Senate President in June 2023.
However, Northern senators are reportedly poised to oppose any move to destabilize their caucus, following the suspension of Ningi.
“The Northern Senators will rise against another plan to destabilize their caucus, barely a few months after Ningi was suspended,” a source noted.
The Concerned Northern Forum (CNF), through a statement signed by Mallam Abdulkadir Kura, defended Ndume, saying, “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 saying the truth about the economic and social reality on the ground, then the Southern Borno Senator needs to be celebrated by all and sundry. So we stand by him.”
The CNF also noted, “Ndume has spoken the minds of the average Nigerians who have been under serious economic hardship since the removal of the fuel subsidy and other anti-people policies of the present administration. This is not the first time Senator Ndume has criticized or challenged policies of the federal government. 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.”
