Ekweremadu’s Face-saving Optimism

POLITICAL NOTES

When 28 Senators voted in favour of electronic transmission of election results, the former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu was among another set of 28 senators, who were conspicuously absent at the Upper Chamber on July 15, 2021 when their presence mattered most to the Nigerian voters.

The masses whose power to choose their leaders has diminished over the years due to the manipulation of the electoral process by desperate politicians had expected Ekweremadu and the other 27 absentee-senators to contribute positively to the one of the most important legislation enacted by the ninth National Assembly.
But the representative of the Enugu West senatorial district at the National Assembly chose to attend the less important regular session of the International Parliament for Tolerance and Peace (IPTP) in Montenegro, where he claimed to have presented the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the National Assembly and the IPTP.

Only the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and those he represented at the event know the importance of the MoU to the Nigeria’s suffering masses, who have been denied the opportunity to elect their leaders due to the electoral fraud perpetrated by the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and their politician-sponsors during the process of transmitting election results from the polling units to the collation centres.

With the absence of Ekweremadu and 27 others, the 52 ‘despicable’ senators, who seem to have benefitted from election malpractices had a field day during the debate on electronic transmission of election results.

However, in what seemed like a face-saving effort, Ekweremadu had hurriedly issued a press statement on his return to the country, assuring of his resolve to work with other patriotic and progressive lawmakers to resurrect the issue of electronic transmission of results upon the resumption of the National Assembly.
He promised to start from the point of harmonisation of the clauses passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The question is: Does Ekweremadu as a minority party leader, have the capacity to influence the All Progressives Congress-led Senate to initiate a fresh debate on the bill at the Upper Chamber? Can Ekweremadu influence President Muhammadu Buhari to ignore the decision of the lawmakers of his party and refuse to sign the bill into law? Indeed, only time shall tell if the Enugu West senator has the capacity to succeed where the more charismatic Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe failed.