By Kola Ologbondiyan in Lagos and Sufuyan Ojeifo in Abuja, 12.22.2006

He, however, said he would wait on the members of the National Assembly to give him the nod to accept the offer or decline.
But a principal officer of the Senate, who spoke to THISDAY last night, said Nnamani will reject the offer even as he assured that some of his colleagues have began to put pressures on the President of the Senate to reject it.

THISDAY gathered yesterday that the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) presidential candidate, Major General Muha-mmadu Buhari, and the ANPP leadership of the party, may have contacted Nnamani to join the party and stand as its presidential running mate for the 2007 election.
Buhari, who ran the 2003 presidential election with the late former Senate President, Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, (from Anambra State), had last Monday emerged as ANPP's consensus candidate for next year's presidential polls.

If Nnamani accepts the offer, he will be required to resign from both the PDP as well as his position as the President of the Senate. The PDP controls the majority in the Senate and the majority party produces the President of the Senate.

In the Senate, many of the senators elected on the platform of the PDP, who sought re-nomination and lost the party’s senatorial primaries, have expressed dissatisfaction with the party hierarchy on account of alleged disappointments.

Nnamani however told a gathering Wednesday night that, "The speculation, and some have already gone to town to write about it, is about whether I have been approached or I am going to be a running mate to one of the presidential candidates. Candidates are beginning to emerge; we are no longer talking about aspirants; we are talking about candidates. That is a step and another level in the course of our democratic process.

"Whether or not I have been approached, I do not think is the issue now. The issue is that the Senate is still consulting on the issue because we work as a family. The National Assembly will, at the appropriate time, issue a statement on that.

"But my immediate constituency is the Senate, and by extension, the National Assembly. I will like to carry them along in whatever I do politically because I owe them a whole lot.

"If the Senators say my time is up, and they say I should resign tomorrow, I will write my resignation letter without raising an eyebrow. But since they have not said I should resign and that I should continue what I am doing, I think I will continue. I will do that regardless of whose feeling is hurt.

"So, I will not comment on the speculation until the Senate issues a statement, which is going to be a collective decision. That is all about that".

The Senate President had earlier explained that "those who are speculating, I am sure you know that right from April 5, 2005 I knew that for every good thing that there is another little bit of sad side to it. I knew I will hit the roadblock and the only way I think I can move is forward and not backward.

"I knew I will not be aspiring to come back to the Senate; this was a decision I made as far back as last year and any person who is close to me and who watched me closely noticed that I did not battle for the distribution of party cards and I did not try to be a linkman or link-woman".

Nnamani said further: "I took it as I saw it. I just picked my card as a loyal member of our party. I did not fight whether I had been marginalised or not; I just thought it was unnecessary. I will just like to point out that in a democratic setting such as ours, we have not matured to a level where people appreciate service if you bend backwards to do that".

He proffered an analogy: "In an organisation, if you have become chief executive of a company and all of a sudden you are struggling to become a branch manager or a personnel manager, people will say something is wrong".

Therefore, he said, "The only way for me is either to go out or to aspire to the other two levels which ever is available. If our constitutional definition says that Senate President is number three citizen, I cannot aspire to any other thing higher politically… than either number two or number one.

"Therefore, to maintain the integrity and prestige, I will not do anything whether in or out of office to debase that very position and because of this, I will consider it appropriate because we have not matured where I can even go back and become a local government council chairman; if I do that, they will say he has come to take our money. They will not appreciate the service in that.

"I know in some countries like United States and I will like to talk about California. It is a State but their economy is more than that of Africa put together. I know that Gov. Jerry Brown was a two-time Governor of California. The other time I visited, he was Mayor of Oakland, a very small county and while a Mayor of Oakland, he was aspiring to become the Attorney General of a State where he was Governor twice, saying such can’t be done in Nigeria without courting ridicule.

"I wouldn’t mind serving as a local government council chairman, but it would be misunderstood," he stated.
"So, for me, I have to step aside and continue to do something else whether in informal leadership and that will be defined at the appropriate moment".

The Senate President, who was sandwiched on the dinner table by a number of Senators, including Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba (SAN), said: "For this evening, we are here to thank members of Press Corps, my colleagues, myself are saying thank you for your objective reporting all these months.

"We have a very vibrant press in Nigeria. I am impressed. You can compete anywhere in the world very favourably because not only in grammar, but the indepth analysis on certain issues. I don’t know how you do it. Sometimes you do the permutations and it works out. I am so happy and as I said earlier when the time comes, I will leave with my head high that we have not at any point tried to suppress any area; we have always liked the Nigerians to hear us because we are representing the people; we are not representing ourselves and I believe that".

When asked to declare the position the Senate would take on the amendments that the House of Represen-tatives has just effected to the Electoral Act 2006, he said that the Senate was still studying them.

According to him, "That amendment being sought by the House of Representatives, the amendment came in two parts. One is the extension of time for the registration; instead of 180 days to an election, it is reduced to 90 days, therefore allowing an additional three months for the registration exercise to go on.

Informed party sources revealed that in a bid to counter the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ticket of Gov. Umar Yar'Adua and Gov. Goodluck Jonathan, the ANPP leadership has resolved to look towards the South East zone for Buhari’s running mate. Both Buhari and Yar' Adua are from Katsina State.

But while Jonathan is from the South-South State of Bayelsa, Senate President, Nnamani, who is being considered to run a joint ticket with Buhari, is from the South-eastern state of Enugu.
THISDAY gathered that the party’s (ANPP) hierarchy also considered Abia State governor, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, and Chief Mike Ahamba (SAN) before settling for Nnamani.

Onu won the party’s presidential primaries in 1999 before stepping down for the joint ticket of Chief Olu Falae and Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi while Ahamba prosecuted Buhari’s case against President Olusegun Obasanjo over the 2003 presidential election.