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

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.

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.