THE 1OTH SENATE AND THE ABSURDITY OF A DÉJÀ VU 

Integrity and capacity should decide leadership positions in an organ of government with a responsibility to make laws, contends Austin Isikhuemen

It is no more news that a couple of days ago, Mr. Felx Morka (no relationship with mouka foam!), the National Publicity Secretary of All Progressive Congress, held a press conference to announce, proudly that his party’s highest organ had taken a decision to dictate to the incoming 10th Senate who their leaders should be.  Those were not his exact words, but that is the purport of the announcement he made to the Nigerian people. He was not just speaking to his party stalwarts.  Recently, he was with Seun Okinbaloye of ChannelsTV who kept ‘putting it to him’ that that was the position his party has taken. Morka struggled to defend the indefensible but his affected Queen’s English (now King’s English!) merely turned a bad situation to an ugly one, to use a popular phrase from his neck of the political woods.

Déjà vu. Have we not seen an attempt like this before? An attempt which backfired so badly in 2015? That was what made Bukola Saraki to pull a fast and smart one that left APC gaping for breath. The man rode, disguised, on the back of a rickety Keke NAPEP to the National Assembly and got elected by the opposition while those who wanted to dictate to them fixed a meeting for the International Conference Centre. That was on 9th June, 2015.  It was unsightly to see men in well -starched babanrigas scrambling in an undignified hurry to get back to the Three Arms Zone on hearing that Saraki and Ikweremadu had opened the stable doors and the horses had bolted. It took four years to undo that shit – pardon my American slang…

Well, the banning of the teaching of history by Morka’s associates has been very impactful. When you add that to our countrymen’s predilection for memory loss of the political variety, you would readily find the reason while this ‘coup attempt’ to emasculate and dictate to the co-equal 10th Senate of the Federal Republic can be contemplated again.  Some party potentates had scheduled a meeting with the elected senators at very time the National Assembly had announced for their first seating to elect their leaders after PMB’s proclamation.

The objective was to dictate to them who to vote for. It was speculated it was Ahmed Lawan for Senate President and Femi Gbajabiamila was their choice for Speaker of the house. While the PDP senators-elect moved to the National Assembly as planned, APC senators headed in the direction where they were invited by their powers that be, away from the National Assembly. The rest is history. It took a whole four years to get the rubber stamp and inkpad back to approve loans and more loans, including the last ones, on the eve of the departure of PMB’s government! Did oversight not become an underwhelming undersight?

It is either a sign of inability to read the political barometer or a feeling of entitlement based on a burgeoning impunity continuity.  Or a feeling that many of the senators, old or new, are so entangled in political IOUs that they will dare not question why someone would want to take away their manhood! What does the law say with respect to the election of the leadership of the national assembly?  It says it is the duty of the elected members to elect their leaders themselves after the proclamation by the President!  Can someone really mistake proclamation for a right to dictate the leadership to the distinguished senators?

As is already playing out, a few APC senators with a spine in their backs have called out this absurdity and vowed to go against it.  The opposition party elected senators have started to call themselves the silent majority though they are still outnumbered by the APC 50 to 59. There has been a massive change in Nigerian election outcomes from the virtual two-party system that held sway from 1999 till the current time. Then Obi happened! Now the party which INEC declared as winner of the Presidential elections and winner of the highest number of seats in the National Assembly has just found it that it has a slim majority. Any time a few of their senators are in agreement with the opposition, the minority may flip to majority easily. Talk of a pyrrhic victory.  

It should have dawned on the APC that the only chance to get things done, as the American would say, is to engage the opposition through negotiation and lobbying.  Dictating to them who their leaders should be is neither of those and it is a strategy that is doomed to failure.  Not even the deployment of ghana-must-go bags of dollars – as alleged by Senator Ndume during an interview with Seun Okinbaloye on ChannelsTV – will be enough to sway some senators and representatives this time. For a party that marketed itself as an anti-corruption czar, it is shameful that outright bribery is being deployed to achieve this ignoble objective of dictating to our elected representatives who are to make laws for our good governance. By the way, is it part of the ethos of the ruling party to use the involvement in unfinished EFCC cases and other legal entanglements as a criterion for leadership nominations? Why will a London judge look kindly on any future allocutus from these shores when the next government official is caught red-handed yonder?

Chances of the ‘real majority’ determining the outcome of the leadership elections in the 10th National Assembly is high indeed provided they organize properly and resist those tantalizing g-m-g’s being passed around.  If poor voters could resist the money shared to influence their votes during the last elections, it would be a shame indeed if any elected representative sells his constituency for a mess of pottage.  Some are also wisely, if you ask me, hedging their bets on the possibility of an Obi or Atiku emergence from an emboldened judiciary bent on redeeming its image and re-asserting its independence.

There is also the issue of avoiding toxic leaders who can sell their kin for a few dollars more.  Integrity and capacity ought to decide leadership positions in an organ of government with a responsibility to make laws. Is it not funning that many of those whose names are flying around are those that have tainted names and soiled hands?  Why will those with EFCC cases with multiple allegations of financial crimes be rewarded with leadership in a country that desires progress and respect among the comity of nations?   Of one of such senators I had submitted on 22nd April 2023 as follows:

“What is more, for one who recently told the nation that it is not yet time for his people to vie for the highest office in the land, it is patently self-serving that he now suddenly claims it is HIS TURN to be Senate President!   Meaning, it was because of his desire to get the senate president position for HIMSELF that he decided to rubbish his people and zone by painting the very best candidate to have sprung for his zone in colours he did not deserve. Like a dullard in class telling the Principal not to make the most outstanding all-round student Senior Prefect because he wants to be made a janitor!  What he did not know, or perhaps is incapable of discerning, was the loud guffaws his attack on Obi caused in the polity.”

Let the algebra and abracadabra continue.  We wait with baited breath. But it will not be long now. Let senators and members of the house of representatives-elect respect their constituencies, respect the Nigerian constitution, grow a backbone and do the right thing.  Wishing Nigeria the very best.