Anti-Jonathan senators to submit impeachment notice Dec 16

A principal player of the planned impeachment move against President Goodluck Jonathan in the Senate,  Senator Alkali Jajere, on today said the formal notice on the issue will be presented to Senate President, David Mark, on December 16.
Jajere, who stated this in an interview with journalists outside the Senate chambers, also said two more senators had indicated interest to sign up for the impeachment, immediately after plenary, thereby raising the figure to 65.
He said, “As of today, the required signatures to initiate the impeachment notice had been obtained. The senate has adjourned to the 16th  so by that date the impeachment notice will be presented on the floor of the senate.
“As of last week,  63 of us have signed up for the impeachment,  my signature was the fourth but I can confirm to you that we have 63 signatures but after the session today,  two people had called me and told me that they want to sign.
“One of them is an APC senator who was away doing campaign because he is contesting the governorship election of his state. The other person is a PDP senator.
“Before the end of today I can assure you that the list will swell up to 70. It is on the impeachment day that we need two-third of the members to carry out the exercise but we need only one-third, which we already have,  to initiate the process. It is just a matter of one day sitting.  We will just push it before the two chambers.”
Jajere said he  signed the impeachment notice because of his convictions that there are impeachable offences against  Jonathan and that the process started early in the year but was truncated.
Jajere, who said he practised journalism for 27 years, insisted that the constitutional breaches committed by the president were enough grounds to impeach him.
He said, “In 2011, this senate approved N240bn as subsidy fund but the same government spent N1.7trn which is a clear breach of the constitution, clear breach of the appropriation act.
“The business of government is to curtail excesses but this government has shown that it is incurably deficient in handling the situations in this country.
“The president should have even resigned without waiting for him to be impeached. The duty of the legislature is to act as a check and balance because it is the most important symbol of democracy.
“If you don’t have the legislature,  you don’t have democracy because every other arm of government exists even when there is no democracy. It is only the legislature that makes a democracy, a government.
“The impeachment issue is not just coming now. It is a process that  started early in the year but there was a hiccup. But today,  there are  issues that have triggered the National Assembly to do what it should do.”
He added that the process of impeachment had started in earnest and expressed confidence that it would be concluded before the general elections next year.

Report from Punch.