Defections push PDP to Senate Majority with 58 members to APC’s 48 [ANALYSIS]

An analysis of facts and figures on Tuesday showed that the present
number of Senators from the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, has
drastically reduced to 48 from the 63 members that accorded APC the
majority status in the upper legislative chamber.
Also, the number of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP,
lawmakers has risen from 43 to 58.

What changed the status quo was the mass defection of the 15 APC
lawmakers earlier on Tuesday.

However, it is worthy of note that the total number of lawmakers that
should be in the Senate is 109, however, the sum of those in the PDP
and APC comes to 106.

Senator Victor Umeh, who is the only member of another opposition
political party known as All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA,
represents the Anambra Central senatorial district, while two other
senators out of the 109 members of the Senate are dead.

Though until the death of the two senators, they were members of the
ruling party, but bye-election is yet to be conducted for their
replacement.

The name of the late senators are: Malam Ali Wakili and Mustapha Bukar
who represented Bauchi South and Katsina North senatorial districts
respectively.

However, the present situation is still subject to an imminent change
in favour of the opposition PDP as the Senate President, Bukola
Saraki; Senator Shehu Sani and some others were yet to announce their
rumoured plan to ditch the APC.