The spokesperson for the Senate Unity Forum, Senator Kabir Marafa, on Sunday demanded the immediate suspension of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, for allegedly creating controversies around the 2016 budget in order to blackmail President Muhammadu Buhari.
Marafa, who is also the Chairman, Senate Committee on National Identity and National Population, told a group of select journalists in Abuja that Saraki and his loyalists in the red chamber were condemning the budget in order to protest his ongoing trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal.
He added that the budget controversies could be linked to the pending trial of Saraki at the CCT.
The Senate President, according to him, through the aid of fifth columnists, had been shouting at different times that the budget was missing, doctored or padded, hence, could no longer be passed as earlier planned.
He said, “Honestly speaking, if I am to comment on the controversy that has been trailing the 2016 budget in the Senate, I will say it is all the work of the fifth columnists there.
“We woke up one day and the Senate President just came and said there was no budget and that the budget was stolen, thereby embarrassing everybody. But the following day, the Speaker said his own was not stolen.
“Next, they said the budget is doctored; next, they said the budget is padded; next, they said there are discrepancies all over the place. We knew how they came into the leadership of the National Assembly or the Senate.
“Was it a coincidence that the issue of padding and everything just came up after the Supreme Court said go and face your trial?
“Suddenly, we started hearing that we cannot pass the budget as we promised, because there are discrepancies and so on and so forth.
“In a nutshell, all the noise about the budget is all about this issue of corruption trial or CCT trial. That is all; no more, no less.”
Marafa insisted that nobody in the Senate could suspend him over the interview he granted and published in the Sunday PUNCH edition of February 7, having read the contents several times and became convinced that he did nothing wrong.