Many commentators had immediately concluded that the Southeast and Southsouth shot themselves in the foot by massively voting for PDP, an action which they said had inadvertently denied the region the position of the Senate presidency. This is in spite of the fact that even with the victory, the APC lacked a two-thirds majority (73 members) needed to take key decisions, thus it will have to depend on the support of PDP for such decisions to sail through in the Senate. And the implications of this became clear as members of APC from the four zones began to jostle for the position of the Senate President and the Speaker of House of Representatives. Of course, the Northwest and the Southwest were automatically excluded from vying for the position of the Senate presidency because the two regions had produced the President and the Vice President respectively.
Thus, the contest for the position of Nigeria’s number three man became a slugfest between ranking Senators from Northcentral and Northeast part of the country. Early contenders for the position include Senators Bukola Saraki, George Akume (Northcentral) Ahmed Lawan and Ali Ndume (Northeast) respectively. The conflicting statements from chieftains of APC on whether the party will or will not zone the position to any of the contending zones further encouraged all the four contenders to go all out to canvass support for their ambitions. APC later realized that if all the contenders are allowed to continue the pursuit of their ambition, it risked the possibility of allowing the PDP to unduly influence the choice of the Senate President.
Speculations that Senator David Mark, the former President of the Senate and Ike Ekweremadu, his deputy may spring a surprise by putting themselves forward for election if APC is unable to reach a consensus on the candidates to support for the position also fuelled the party’s fears. The argument was that with block votes of 49 PDP Senators, the opposition party was capable of springing a surprise on the floor of the National Assembly on the day of the proclamation, especially if the candidates of APC split the 59 votes of the 49 PDP Senators among themselves. After all, the Constitution does not specifically stipulate that the principal officers of the National Assembly must emerge from the majority party while PDP also has the number to form the stipulated quorum for the election.
Though Mark, in reaction to the speculations emphatically said the PDP will not contest for the position of the Senate President and the Deputy Senate President having lost the leadership of the National Assembly to another party, leaders of APC were not convinced. After appeals to the different contenders to sit down and agree on a consensus candidate failed, the party decided to take the bull by the horn when it forced the contenders to reach a consensus on who to support for the position of the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives during a retreat organised for the lawmakers in Abuja in May.
Though the effort failed, it led to realignment of forces among the contenders as Saraki agreed to contest the position of Senate President with Akume as his Deputy while Lawan also agreed to run with Akume under the same arrangement. This arrangement led to the emergence of two strong camps- the “Unity Forum,” made up of supporters of the Lawan/Akume ticket and the “Like Minded Senators” comprising Senators in support of the Saraki/Ndume ambition. With the emergence of the two camps, it became even more difficult for party leaders to broker the idea of consensus candidate to the contenders who were being egged on by their vociferous supporters. But the party intervened again with the straw poll organised for the lawmakers the weekend before the proclamation of the National Assembly.
The contentious straw polls resulted in the emergence of Lawan and Akume as the party’s candidates for the office of the Senate presidency and Deputy Senate Presidency while Gbajabiamila and Monguno also emerged as the party’s preferred candidates for the leadership of the House of Representatives. Lawan especially enjoyed the support of most APC Senators. But the camps that lost in the controversial straw polls rejected the result as they either claimed the process was manipulated to favour the successful contenders or that they were not part of the entire arrangement. The losing camp also asked the party to keep off since the President had repeatedly said he was not interested in influencing election of principal officers of the National Assembly.
Last minute appeal by Oyegun to APC members in the National Assembly to respect the party’s views and the decisions arrived at in the selection of persons that will be presented to the National Assembly as presiding officers fell on deaf ears. It was clear by Monday, 8th June that Saraki and Dogara were bent on defying the party as all entreaties to make them toe the party’s position failed. The two camps boycotted a meeting called by the party which was to be addressed by Vice President Osinbajo. The party then reached out to the President who returned to Nigeria from the G7 meeting on the morning of the proclamation of the 8th session of the National Assembly, urging him to intervene in the situation which was now clearly out of the control of the party leaders.
In a counter-strategy, Saraki who perceived that he may not receive the support of the majority of APC Senators had reached out to members of his former party, the PDP, for support. This magazine gathered that 47 PDP Senators gathered on Monday night at the residence of the former Senator Mark. Also present at the meeting was Ekweremadu, members of the PDP National Working Committee and governors elected on the platform of the party. It was at this meeting which Saraki confirmed to have attended in an interview last week that the decision to support Saraki by the opposition lawmakers was reached.
Olisa Metuh, the National Publicity Secretary of PDP issued a statement early Tuesday 9 June on the convocation of the National Assembly announced that members of the party will vote for Saraki and Dogara. But in a last-minute attempt to stop the Saraki/PDP plot, the National Publicity Secretary of APC sent out a message that the President would be meeting the APC National Assembly members at the International Conference at 9a.m while a previous letter from Buhari to the Clerk had indicated that the 8th session of the National Assembly will be proclaimed at 10 a.m. the same day.
While some APC lawmakers had started arriving at the International Conference Centre for their meeting with Buhari as early as 8 a.m., Saraki had other plans. Instead of heading for the venue of the meeting, the former Kwara State governor, assured of the block votes of the 49 PDP Senators-elect, in addition to the votes of few renegade APC members headed for the National Assembly. Thus, when the Clerk of the National Assembly called for nominations for the post of Senate President, only Saraki’s name was mentioned, thus his unanimous election by 49 PDP senators and seven APC senators. Ekweremadu was sworn in as Deputy President of the Senate, after he polled 54 votes to defeat Senator Ali Ndume who polled 20 votes.
Saraki, many APC chieftains had since argued, stabbed the party in the back by reaching an agreement with PDP to allow Ekweremadu emerge as the Deputy Senate President in his desperation to become the Senate President. President Buhari had during his trip to South Africa last month spoken in this vein when he observed that the former Kwara State governor had in his desperation to become the Senate President divided the APC and ceded the position of the deputy senate president to the PDP. “One of the candidates went and got the support of the former ruling party, and he divided our party. That was why the party was not pleased about it. The party ran a primary and the one (Senator Ahmad Lawan) who was competing with Saraki won to become APC’s candidate in the Senate. But then Saraki did not agree with that; he virtually divided the party and he got the support of the PDP and he allowed a PDP senator to become his deputy,” the President said.
Senator Dino Melaye, a key supporter of Saraki had, however, insisted that the blame for the loss of the position of Deputy Senate President should be laid at the doorsteps of Senators who headed to International Conference Centre instead of the chambers of the National Assembly on 9, June. The Senator representing Kogi West in the Senate said Ekweremadu won the election for Deputy Senate President because some members of APC did not attend the inauguration. “For you to know that we stood by our party, we nominated Ali Ndume. We, who were in the chambers as at the time of the election, were 20 APC members and we voted for Ndume as at that time.” Saraki who denied having any deal with PDP had parroted this argument in a recent interview while denying that he had any deal with PDP on the matter of election of Ekweremadu.
The Senate President also stated that he was pained by the emergence of a PDP member as his deputy. “For any APC member, it is unfortunate that we have a PDP man as a Deputy Senate President. It is painful for any APC member. When we went through all the struggles that was not what we signed for,” said the former governor. Still, members of the Unity Forum had continued to explore ways of forcing Ekweremadu out of the seat of Deputy Senate President.
In a letter to the leadership of APC on 21 June, the group listed six reasons the election of Ekweremadu as the Deputy President of the Senate is dangerous for the APC-led Federal Government, especially in fulfilment of the promise of the party to Nigerians. Members of the Unity Forum noted in the letter that though by tradition, the Nigerian Senate President is powerful; it is the Deputy Senate President that directly interacts and controls the day to day activities of the Senate.
The group noted that the Deputy Senate President may utilise the regular opportunity he gets to preside over the plenary session of Senate when the Senate President may be away attending to other functions to “frustrate the good intentions of “APC” government. The group also noted that the Deputy Senate President could use his position as the chairman of Constitution Review Committee to frustrate necessary and vital constitutional amendments in the course of Buhari’s administration. In the same vein, the Unity group also said in the letter that APC could not afford to leave the task of collecting and supervising the final budget documents in the preparation of the Appropriation Bill which by convention is delegated to the Deputy Senate President to an opposition member, given its importance in the realization of APC manifesto.
The group further noted that the Deputy Senate President is statutorily the chairman of the Governing Council of the National Institute of Legislative Studies, NILS, an institution charged with the responsibility of building capacity for legislators and their supporting staff while he also represents the Nigerian Legislature at the ECOWAS Parliament as Speaker. The group said it will be a misnomer for a PDP member to be representing an APC government at the international level. “With the above functions of the Deputy Senate President, we feel extremely concerned about implications of a PDP Senator occupying this exalted position at this time when Nigerians have voted for change,” the group said in the letter.
Saraki had also so far resisted attempts by members of the Unity Forum to force Ekweremadu to vacate his seat over arguments that he was not properly elected. Senator Kabiru Marafa, one of the leading supporters of Ahmed Lawan had raised a point of order where he observed that the election of Ekweremadu was in breach of the senate’s standing rules during the plenary of the Senate on 24 June.
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