By Samuel Malik

The All Progressives Congress, APC, has reacted angrily to the emergence of Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara as Senate President and House Speaker respectively, saying their victory has a whiff of “treachery, disloyalty and insincerity.”

The party, over the weekend, adopted Ahmed Lawan for the position of Senate President and Femi Gbajabiamila for House Speaker, but Saraki and Dogara emerged victorious on the floors of the Senate and House of Representatives with the support of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which asked their members to vote for the duo.

Lai Mohammed, the APC’s spokesperson, in a statement, said they were not the party’s candidates and would be sanctioned.

”Senator Bukola and Hon. Dogara are not the candidates of the APC and a majority of its National Assembly members-elect for the positions of Senate President and House Speaker. The party duly met and conducted a straw poll and clear candidates emerged for the posts of Senate President, Deputy Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives, supported by a majority of all Senators-elect and members-elect of the House of Representatives. All National Assembly members-elect who emerged on the platform of the party are bound by that decision.

”The party is supreme and its interest is superior to that of its individual members. Consequently, the APC leadership is meeting in a bid to re-establish discipline in the party and to mete out the necessary sanctions to all those involved in what is nothing but a monumental act of indiscipline and betrayal to subject the party to ridicule and create obstacles for the new administration,” Mohammed said.