Senators’ defection a blow to Nigeria’s Buhari

Bloomberg

Nigeria’s ruling party lost its majority in the Senate after more than a dozen lawmakers defected to the main opposition group, dealing a blow
to President Muhammadu Buhari before he seeks re-election in seven months.
A group of 15 senators quit the All Progressives Congress to join the People’s Democratic Party, Senate President Bukola Saraki said in the capital, Abuja. The Senate later said on Twitter that two of the defectors were joining a different opposition party.
“It’s significant,” APC spokesman Bolaji Abdullahi said by phone. “What happened is not something that we just allowed to happen. We’d been having deliberations with our members up until last night to stave off this particular situation,” he said.
Buhari, a 75-year-old former military ruler, will seek a second four-year term as leader of Africa’s biggest oil producer at elections due in February. He is contending with the unraveling of the coalition that formed the APC and brought him to power by defeating an incumbent in 2015 for the first time since independence.
The president urged his supporters “to see the defections as a seasonal occurrence” when elections are approaching, adding that it would have no impact on the ruling party, his spokesman Garba Shehu said. While APC spokesman Abdullahi conceded the majority loss, a senator from the ruling party, Ahmed Lawan, insisted that it still had the biggest number of seats after the defections.
“It’s a blow to the APC,” Jared Jeffrey, an analyst at NKC African Economics near Cape Town, South Africa, said. “Buhari still has the advantage of being the incumbent, but it’s getting more and more difficult and competitive for him.”
About 37 APC members of Nigeria’s lower chamber, the House of Representatives, also defected, with 32 joining the PDP, majority leader Femi Gbajabiamila said. The ruling party retained the majority, he said.
July 24’s defections came weeks after an APC faction, made up of former PDP
members who joined the
ruling party in 2015 — including Saraki and the speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara — announced they would join a broad opposition coalition led by the PDP, which held power for 16 years until its 2015 defeat.
Neither Saraki nor Dogara have publicly confirmed leaving the APC. Relations between Nigeria’s legislature and executive have been strained, with Saraki and Dogara often going against the party line.
Security operatives surrounded the houses of Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, in Abuja, their spokesmen said. According to Jeffrey at NKC African Economics, Saraki is likely to leave the APC and seek the leadership of the opposition coalition.