Senate presidency: Ndume vows not to step down

BY: Oliseama Okwuchukwu

Senator Mohammed Ali-Ndume has said that he is not relying on the support of his former party, the Peoples Democratic Party, as he seeks to become president of the ninth Senate.

With only 61 days to the election of a new president for the 9th Senate, one key contestant, Senator Mohammed Ali-Ndume, denied on Monday that he entered an alliance with the Peoples Democratic Party to help him clinch the seat.

Ali-Ndume, a former Senate Leader, also said he would not step down for any opponent, but that he was still consulting on the matter.

The All Progressives Congress senator from Borno State met with Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Monday.

Ali-Ndume, who arrived the closed-door meeting about 3.24pm, emerged from the venue around 4.18pm, declining to give any elaborate interview to waiting State House correspondents.

But the reporters still asked him whether he had yielded to pressure from the APC to step down for the preferred party choice, Senator Ahmed Lawan.

With a look of surprise on his face, Ali-Ndume responded, “Me, step down? I am still consulting.”

On the rumours that he was banking on forging an alliance with the PDP, Ali-Ndume ruled it out on the grounds that the opposition considered him to be an “enemy.”

He stated, “Me that is regarded as enemy by opposition?”

Ali-Ndume had once been a member of the PDP, but he later defected to the APC ahead of the 2015 polls.

He won a re-election to the Senate this year on the platform of the APC to serve in the incoming 9th National Assembly.

Aside from Lawan, Senator Danjuma Goje and Senator Abdullahi Adamu have also been mentioned to be vying to become the successor to Senator Bukola Saraki as the next President.