Senate Presidency: I Have No Ill Feelings Towards Ndume, Goje, Says Lawan

Senate Leader, Ahmed Lawan, has said he has no ill feelings towards Senator Ali Ndume or Senator Danjuma Goje over their ambition to contest for the position of the next Senate president in the ninth assembly.


Senator Ahmad Lawan, an All Progressives Congress (APC) senator, representing Yobe North senatorial zone,, made the remark when he was a guest at the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) forum in Abuja.

NAN reported that the APC had zoned the Senate president’s slot to the north east where the trio of Lawan, Ndume and Goje hailed from.

However, the ruling party endorsed the candidacy of Lawan for the position.

But Ndume (APC- Borno), and Goje, had stood their grounds on vying for the number one seat of the Senate.

“I want to thank my party and my leaders for having confidence in me. I want to assure everyone very seriously because it is a burden that my party feels I can carry.

“By the grace of God and with the support of my colleagues in the APC, PDP and YPP in the Senate, we should be able to deliver that burden very well.

“I have no hard feelings against my brothers from the North-east contesting. What the party and the leaders did was to say I have been recommended or I have been endorsed. That is a preference; that the party has a preference is not to say that others cannot do the job.

But definitely, the party, our leaders have some reasons why they think we are most suitable for this job,” Lawan said.

The lawmaker, however, said the decision of his colleagues to contest the position with him was constitutional.

“But this is democracy; you cannot shut out somebody if that person feels he has the right to run and of course, the constitution allows for that.

“But definitely, the party and the leaders have spoken and we are not resting on our oars.

“We are going from door to door; we are talking to all the senators-elect. We talk to the APC senators, PDP senators and YPP senator, believing that we are going to work with them.

“Therefore, we need to bridge the gap and we need to know ourselves even before we get there,’’ he said.

According to him, the effort is yielding fruits because “majority of the senators feel that really we have something to offer and that by the grace of God when we are able to make it, we can, together, work out that desirous legislative interventions of the time for the executive to have something to work on.