Ekweremadu Will be Replaced by Uwajumogu as Deputy Senate President - Okorocha

Gov. Okorocha & Ike Ekweremadu

 

While speaking on Sunday night at a victory party to celebrate the outcome of the July 23, 2016 rerun election in two constituencies, the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, said that Senator Ike Ekweremadu should be warming up to lose his seat as the Deputy Senate President.

 

The governor who is speaking through his Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo, said a candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Benjamin Uwajumogu, who contested in last Saturday rerun senatorial election in Imo State, would displace Ekweremadu as soon as he joins the Senate.

 

According to a report on Punch Newspaper, he said it would be an aberration for Ekweremadu to still continue to retain his seat as the Deputy Senate President, after Uwajumogu had joined the Senate, adding that with the outcome of the rerun election, Ekweremadu’s seat had come under “heavy threat.”

 

The governor who said that Ekweremadu knew and feared the possibility of losing his seat, was why he relocated to Imo State three days to the rerun election, adding that it had become inevitable for Ekweremadu not to relinquish the Deputy Senate President seat to Uwajumogu.

 

“The position of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as the Deputy Senate President is at the moment under heavy threat, because in no distant time, the APC Senator in-waiting from Imo State, Benjamin Uwajumogu, will take over the seat on the grounds that it is an aberration that a PDP senator from the South-East is deputy to an APC Senate President because, before now, the APC could not produce a senator from the South-East zone.

“Senator Ekweremadu had known that such a development was not only feasible but inevitable and that was why he fully funded the candidate of the PDP in the rerun senatorial poll in Okigwe zone and also relocated to the state three days to the election date,” Okorocha was quoted as saying.

 

While responding to the governor's statement, Ike Ekweremadu said Okorocha was on a wild goose chase for saying he (Ekweremadu) would lose his seat to the APC.

 

In a statement issued by the Special Adviser (Media) to the Deputy President of the Senate, Uche Anichuwku, Ekweremadu said Okorocha’s statement showed a poor understanding of the workings of the legislature, adding that he was not perturbed in any way by the wishful prospects of an APC senator of South-East extraction.