The President of the Nigerian Senate, Sen. Godswill Akpabio has formerly declared vacant, the seats of Senator Dave Umahi of Ebonyi South Senatorial District and Ibrahim Geidam of Yobe East Senatorial District following their assumption of office as ministers.
The Senate, therefore, asked the Independent National electoral commission (INEC) to conduct by-elections to fill the vacant seats immediately.
Both Umahi and Geidam were both inaugurated as members of the 10th National Assembly in June but they resigned in August after President Bola Tinubu appointed them as members of his cabinet.
While Umahi is the Minister of Works, Geidam is the Minister of Police Affairs. Conversely, ex-governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, resigned lately as Labour Minister to return to the Senate after a court verdict affirmed him the Senator for Plateau South.
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Meanwhile, INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu had on Monday said re-run and bye-elections might be held across the country next February.
‘With regard to the bye-elections, you may recall that in my recent address at the swearing-in of new Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) which was combined with our last quarterly meeting with the RECs nationwide, I made a commitment that the Commission will conduct elections to fill vacancies in the National and State Assembly constituencies.
‘The Commission is looking at the first week of February 2024; in just a little over one month to conduct both the re-run and bye-elections,’ Yakubu had said.
Recall that President Bola Tinubu had last week asserted that having Senator Akpabio, by his corner as a partner and Tajudeen Abbas as Speaker of the House of Representatives was good enough to make him succeed as the leader of Africa’s most populous country.
This was precisely what he said—that a sense of fraternity and a conviction that one nation will lead the other on the correct path—was expressed.
The President spoke at a colloquium held to mark Akpabio’s 61st birthday in Abuja.