A government source revealed that afraid the Senate is bent on carrying on a mass defection plan, some loyalists of President Muhammadu Buhari in the red chamber sold the idea of taking over the Senate leadership to some officials of the government.
This was after spirited attempts to stop the exodus, by the new leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Buhari looked fruitless.
A plan was therefore hatched to create vacancy in the presiding post by taking out the two presiding officers from the Senate on the same day.
To achieve this, the police, which had kept mum on its investigation of the Offa incident for over a month, was mobilised to revisit the Offa robbery matter by inviting Mr Saraki and then detaining him pending execution of the take-over plan, the paper quoting a source said.
It EFCC was allegedly also primed to arrest Ekweremadu, effectively leaving the Senate without a presiding officer.
Spokesperson of the Police, Jimoh Moshood and EFCC’s Wilson Uwujaren were not available to clarify positions of their organisations in the imbroglio. While Mr Moshood did not respond to repeated calls placed by our reporter, Mr Uwujaren’s phone was switched off.
The planners from the Senate, reportedly led by the Senate Majority Leader, Ahmed Lawan, planned to use the vacuum expected to be created to invoke Senate Rules to appoint Senate President pro-tempo, paving way to sacking the two principal officers.
Attempts to get Lawan failed as his known telephone line was not going through. He also did not respond to a text message sent to him, as at the time of publishing this report.
