Senate adds to Obasanjo's political woes

Nigeria's Senate on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to probe alleged breaches of the constitution by President Olusegun Obasanjo. The vote by the upper chamber of government came one day after the expiry of a two-week ultimatum by the country's lower chamber, the House of Representatives, that Obasanjo should resign or be impeached. Both arms of parliament are dominated by the People's Democratic Party (PDP), led by Obasanjo. A motion by PDP senator Jonathan Zwingina, urging the senate to action, was passed by a vote of 76 to five in the 109-member upper legislative chamber. The rest of the members were either absent or abstained from voting. The motion empowers a special senate committee to liaise with the House of Representatives in articulating grievances against the president. "We swore to uphold the Constitution, not to uphold the Commander-in-Chief... This is the time to act," Zwingina said. The representatives, who also met on Tuesday to discuss their options after Obasanjo defied their resignation demand, appointed a seven-member committee to fine-tune their allegations of incompetence, violations of the constitution and corruption against the president. These will be presented to the House when it reconvenes on 4 September. The latest developments came after a national broadcast by President Obasanjo on Sunday, in which he said he had survived the impeachment threat, thanked his supporters and described the ultimatum by the House of Representatives as "a joke taken too far". PDP chairman Audu Ogbeh, who has shown strong support for Obasanjo in his protracted feud with the legislature, took exception to the tone of the broadcast, saying it was unlikely to help heal festering wounds in the party. "We are going to draw the attention of the president to those comments... we are going to do it formally," Ogbeh told reporters in the capital, Abuja, on Wednesday. Ogbeh said he was particularly worried that the raging crisis was likely to undermine the ruling PDP's chances in the general elections due in the first quarter of 2003.