Following threats of impeachment by colleagues in the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), caucus the Senate Minority Leader, Usman Albishir and minority whip, Yusha’u Anka, have resigned their positions.
In a letter to the President of the Senate, Adolphus Wabara, jointly signed by the two Senators and presented to the Senate in plenary yesterday, Albishir and Anka said they decided to sacrifice their positions to stave off rumblings in the minority caucus.
The resignation would, however, take effect from the last day of the Senate’s sitting in December.
Some members of the ANPP caucus in the Senate reportedly hatched a plot to remove Albishir and Anka for alleged loss of focus.
Several meetings were said to have held on Monday and Tuesday to perfect strat-egies for the impeachment move as well as counter-attempts to foil the plot.
But Albishir and Anka stunned the Senate chambers yesterday when Wabara read the letter, dated Nove-mber 24.
Part of the letter reads: “We, the undersigned, Sen-ator Usman Albishir and Senator Yushau Mohammed Anka, have decided to resign The revelation also co-mes at a time when there are loud cries about rising poverty in the country, especially in most parts of the north.
According to the revenue breakdown from the ministry of finance, Kano State got the highest share of revenue in the north within the period under review with a total receipt of N80,127,696,501.18 (N80.1 billion), while Plateau State collected the least rev-enue of N33,921,230,948.11 (N33.9 billion) for the five-year period.
Other states that got high revenue in the region include Kaduna and Katsina with N65,422,623,563.80 and N62,905,244,523.02 respe-ctively. These are followed by Niger and Sokoto states with N57,488,722,279.41 and N50,907,232,926.45 resp-ectively.
Detailed breakdown of allocations received by each of the 19 northern states is hereby presented. from our respective position of minority leader and minority whip effective from the date we close this session in December 2004.
“It appears that the gro-wing crisis within our party which we have been working tirelessly to resolve seems to have reared its ugly head in the ANPP caucus within the minority parties in the Sen-ate. Rather than allow ANPP senators to be fighting each other due largely to external influences, we have decided to sacrifice our positions of leadership for the unity of our party caucus in the Senate.”
The Senate chambers was silent as Wabara read the letter.
Albishir was later seen moving from one seat to ano-ther conferring with his colleagues.
Although the ANPP Sen-ate caucus met behind closed doors yesterday, no official position was given on Albi-shir and Anka’s replacement.
Daily Trust, however, gathered that a Senator from Albishir’s Yobe State was being touted as the next minority leader.
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