ABUJA, JULY 24, 2018 – Fifteen senators quit the ruling All Progressives Congress party on Tuesday, making it a minority in parliament’s upper house and indicating worsening rifts in President Muhammadu Buhari’s political camp months ahead of an election.
Fourteen of the 15 lawmakers went to the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a letter read on the Senate floor stated. Another senator later left the ruling party while parliament was in session.
The PDP, which was in power from the start of civilian rule in 1999 until Buhari took office in 2015, said in a tweet that 32 lawmakers in the lower house of parliament, the House of Representatives, had also defected from the APC.
The defections may make it harder for Buhari to push through his legislative agenda for the remainder of his first term, and follows the disclosure by a faction of Buhari’s ruling APC party this month that it no longer backs his government.
Deepening divisions threaten to split support for Buhari within powerful patronage networks and among voters ahead of a presidential poll scheduled for February 2019 that will decide who runs Africa’s top oil producer.
The letter read to lawmakers in the Senate included the names – later tweeted by the upper house – of the individuals, who included Musa Kwankwaso, a former governor of northern Kano state, and Dino Melaye, a close associate of Senate president Bukola Saraki.
“Total number of APC senators that defected is now 15. With Senator Nyako signing few minutes ago. APC is now a minority in the senate,” said Saraki’s aide, Bamikole Banks Omisore in a tweet.
