‘Boroffice seat can’t be declared vacant’

National Publicity Secretary, Action Congress of Nigeria, Alhaji Lai Mohammed

Action Congress has warned of “surreptitious moves” by the leadership of the Senate and the ruling  People’s Democratic Party to declare  vacant the seat of Senator Ajayi  Boroffice, representing  Ondo North  Senatorial District.

Boroffice recently defected from the Labour Party to the Action Congress of Nigeria.

In a statement in Lagos on  Wednesday by its National Publicity Secretary Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said  under the nation’s constitution and laws,  it is only the courts that can make the determination that a legislator’s seat has become vacant and warned the David Mark-led Senate to desist from its arm twisting tactics to gain undue  political advantage.

According to the party Senator Boroffice has violated no provision of the 1999 Constitution as amended or any extant law when it made the decision  to dump the Labour Party for the Action Congress of Nigeria and “this latest attempt to arm twist and declare Senator Boroffice’s seat vacant came only after months of overt and covert pressure to make him to join the ruling Peoples Democratic Party failed”.

The ACN said it would resist “the boot-jack manipulations”. The party  called on all its members in the Senate to resist and fight “this act of illegality and barefaced provocation aimed at destabilising the party  ahead of the October 20  Ondo  state governorship  election”.

The party recalled that since the dawn of democratic government 13 years ago, the nation had witnessed  opposition senators defecting to the ruling PDP without any threat of sanction  and vowed “to stop at nothing within the ambits of the law  to ensure that what  is good for the goose is  also good for  the gander”.