A serving senator from Zamfara who is the Senate Committee Chairman on Petroleum (Downstream), Senator Kabiru Marafa (APC, Zamfara), had on Thursday at Senate Plenary told the Senate that Governor Abdulaziz Yari is not from Zamfara State.
It was gathered that both Yari and Marafa disagreed over Ahmad Bello Mahmud who nominated by President Muhammadu Buhari to represent Zamfara for the position Resident Electoral Commission of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
As learnt, Yari has maintained that the nominee is not from Zamfara and such he should not represent Zamfara in INEC, asking INEC to not confirm, a request which Senator Marafa countered as he said that the nominee should be allowed to represent the state.
Raising a point of order, senator Marafa, said; “It is very clear that the only opposition to this nominee is coming from the Governor of Zamfara State who wrote to the president that the nominee is not from Zamfara State but from Sokoto State. The governor’s parents are not from Zamfara State.”
“My president in your wisdom when I came with a motion for a passionate appeal to my colleagues to do justice for an innocent Nigerian who was nominated to represent Zamfara state in INEC as a resident electoral commissioner,” Marafa said.
“You directed that the matter back to the committee for further legislative action. I took that wise counsel from you that the committee will do the needful even when I know that there is nothing they can add to what they have done because their report was quite explicit and extensive, Mr president order 1 (27) says ‘in considering the appointment of a nominee, the committee shall not call to witness any person as witness other than the nominee himself.
“However, there may be memorandum submitted to committee, if any such memorandum should contain the names of the writer, a verifiable address, a clear and dated signature and it shall be accompanied by an affidavit’
“It is very clear that the only opposition to this nominee is coming from the governor of Zamfara state who wrote to the president that the nominee is not from Zamfara state but from Sokoto state. My distinguished colleague from Zamfara north stood on the floor to say the nominee is from Kebbi State.
“The committee did a very good job when they said the nominee was born in Gusau, went to school in Anka, he served as the commissioner of justice in Zamfara for four years. The governor wrote a petition, he has a right to write a petition but he cannot violate our order – his petition is not accompanied with an affidavit, therefore his petition is null and void.
“I want to state very clearly that the governor has no right, this is senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and we are not his boys. I am not his boy and this senate cannot be his rubber stamp we are not hold somebody’s future because of the interest of one particular one who is equally guilty.
It will be recalled that Governor Yari had in a petition addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari in March this year and copied the Senate leadership, alleged that the nominee was not an indigene of the state .
But according to Marafa he said; “the Governor himself based on available records on his ancestral roots, is not an indigene of the state but elected as governor because he was born and brought up there the same way the rejected REC nominee was born and brought up in Gusau , the capital of the state “.
But the Senate President in his ruling just noted Marafa’s point of order by urging him to allow the Senate committee already mandated by the upper chamber to reconsider the nomination of the embattled nominee, come up with its report.
