A former National Chairman of the Peoples Progressive Alliance, PPA, Chief Larry Essien, has blasted a former Senate president, Ken Nnamani, after he claimed he was responsible for truncating the third term agenda of a former president in the country, Olusegun Obasanjo.
Essien while terming the statement made by the Nigerian politician and former Senate President as “false and self glorification” added that the former lawmaker “arrogated to himself what he never engineered.”
Following Nnamani’s comment wherein he stated that he had no regrets truncating the third term agenda of the former president, he added: “If given another opportunity, I would still preside over stoppage of the botched third term agenda.”
In reaction to the claim, Essien added that it was the former Deputy Senate president, Ibrahim Mantu, who was the chairman of the constitution review committee at the time.
He added that he suspected the former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, to have worked with the United States in aborting the former Nigerian leader’s third term agenda.
Essien further noted that Nnamani was just a senator and was not in a capacity to stop what Obasanjo wanted.
He added: “The lies sold to the public is unbecoming and I am surprised that the former senate president is trying to circumvent the true facts of third term agenda.”
“If the constitution review committee had subscribed to the idea of tenure elongation which Senator Ibrahim Mantu chaired, third term agenda would have been a success story.”
Essien further noted that Senator Mantu who has maintained his peace and silence on the matter was able to reveal part of what happened during an interview where he said “the third term agenda failed because most of the senators bought into the campaign of those men who did not want Obasanjo to have another tenure.
“Atiku and Kalu came under serious political persecution for opposing the third term agenda which attempted to remove constitutional term limits.
“First, they were deregistered from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which led to Kalu’s founding of People’s Progressive Alliance (PPA) and subsequent casting of Atiku as corrupt and unreliable. The big arm of the Federal Government fell on Kalu and his businesses.”