The battle for the leadership of the incoming 10th National Assembly is getting hotter by the day as a growing number of senior lawmakers appear to be in opposition to President Bola Tinubu’s open and flagrant support for the choice of the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, a few days before his inauguration.
But the fight for the independence of the legislature as an interdependent arm of government, vis-a vis the executive and judiciary, is slipping away from the gladiators as the President beat a hasty and tactical retreat from his pre-inauguration stand during the week and rallied party loyalists, consolidated inter-party alliances and intensified consultation.
According to Section 50 of the Constitution, sub-section a and b, the President and a Deputy President of the Senate, Speaker and Deputy Speaker shall be elected by the members of that National Assembly from among themselves.
The lawmakers would in all likelihood observe this constitutional mandate in the breach as THEWILL found out deep into the weekend, following the horse-trading going on among the contending aspirants and their principals.
Given its majority in the National Assembly, NASS, the governing APC on May 9, 2023 with the fiat of President Bola Tinubu, announced the party’s preferred candidates and zones to fill the four major slots for the 10th National Assembly.
For Senate President, which the party zoned to the South-South geopolitical zone, Senator Godswill Akpabio from Akwa Ibom State was named for the position, while the choice of Deputy Senate President was zoned to the North-West with Senator Barau Jibrin from Kano as the candidate.
The position of Speaker of the House of Representatives was given to the North-West, with Abbas Tajudeen from Kaduna as the candidate, while the position of Deputy Speaker went to the South East and Ben Kalu from Abia.
A few senators- elect felt affronted by the President’s action which they perceived as portending one thing: Control of the National Assembly. Another group felt short changed by the president’s decision. Both have teamed up to give the party and Federal Government a fight and their numbers are growing by the day to the party’s and president’s discomfort.
Senate Chief Whip, Orji Uzor Kalu, who failed to get endorsement from the party and rally his colleagues to support his bid for the senate presidency, decided to team up with a former Governor of Zamfara State, Abdulaziz Yari, a Zamfara West Senator-elect, to fiercely challenge the government and the party’s candidates, Akpabio and Barau.
The same intra-party scenario is playing out for the Speakership of the House of Representatives where Muktar Betara from Borno State, among other contenders, poses a stiff challenge to the party and government candidates.
UNFOLDING DRAMA AND INTRIGUES
As of last Friday, four days to the election and inauguration of the 10th National Assembly, the Akpabio and Yari groups claim to have the backing of 75 senators, a figure that is well above the required simple majority votes to clinch the senate presidency. At the House, Batera, Chairman of Appropriation Committee of the 9th House of Representatives, has, surprisingly, muscled his way through the four other challengers to give the party and the presidency a lot to worry about. But there is more to this politicking than meets the eye.
For the House, where the issue of religion is virtually non-existent since the two major contestants, Tajudeen and Batera, are Muslims unlike in the Senate, the APC and the presidency have been able to maintain their support for their candidates.
First, the House of Reps Speaker Femi Gabjabiamila’s decision to go against Section 68 of the Constitution, which forbids a legislator to hold an executive position while still a member of the National Assembly and delay his assumption of office as Chief of Staff to the President until June 14, 2021, a day after the inauguration of the 10th House, was part of the plan to prevent any aspirant, including this deputy, Ahmed Idris Wase, from taking over and use the office to his advantage.
Apart from that, the party in cahoot with the presidency has successfully sold the idea to members of the National Assembly that two principal officers, the Speaker and Senate President, cannot come from the same zone, according to sources. Yari, though an independent candidate, and the party’s candidate, Tajudeen, come from the same North-West geopolitical zone.
Still pursuing this zonal agenda at the Senate, the party has knocked Batera’s ambition; he comes from the same North-East as Vice President Kashim Shetimma, who together with Governor Zulum have supported the party’s stand.
Still, Yari and his group, on the one hand and Batera, whose growing influence among his colleagues has since attracted the support of Yari’s group on the other, have both refused to back down, thereby forcing the party and the presidency to restrategise.
Tinubu has enlarged his consultation across party lines to rally support, while exploiting the deep divisions in almost all the parties with elected members at the National Assembly.
Consequently, the President last Thursday took the challenge to the senators at a meeting and made up for his perceived pre-inauguration antagonism. Deftly, he wooed all the lawmakers-elect in his address by assuring them that he would not interfere in their choice of the leadership of the National Assembly, but subtly reminded members of the APC to respect the zoning arrangement of the party. Many senators, it was gathered, were bowled over by the persuasive ability of the President.
EXPLOITING PARTY DIVISIONS
Strikingly, all the major political parties are having internal crises at present and this is either working for or against them, with regard to their positions on the NASS leadership. For the Labour Party, LP, the factionalisation of the party has made it impossible to maintain unity among its elected members.
Contacted at the weekend, a senator-elect on the platform of the party confided in THEWILL that the party had not told them what to do or who to support, with just days to D-day.
“Maybe by Sunday, we will hear the party,” he said rhetorically and added that apart from the divisions within the party, some elected members were either greenhorns or persons who rode on the popularity of the party’s presidential candidate to power and therefore they are open to persuasion.
The case of the major opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is similar. Unlike 2015 when the pain of losing the presidential election that year had galvanized them to present a united effort, which paid off in the position of deputy senate president through an alliance with Dr Bukola Saraki, the party is currently torn by dissent and its hold on members is very weak. The rebellious G-5 governors, who played a major role in undermining the success of the party at the polls are now hobnobbing with President Tinubu. At least twice within the past month, former Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike visited Tinubu at the Aso Rock Villa.
Apart from other deals that are yet to be disclosed, sources say they are collectively working with the President to achieve his mission on Akpabio and Tajudeen.
A MATTER OF NUMBERS
Going by the role that numbers play in determining the outcome of who wins in the forthcoming election of the presiding officers of the 10th National Assembly, the race is getting tighter with a tilt towards the governing party’s anointed candidates.
The governing APC has 59 Senators-elect, while the PDP has 35 after two Senators – Matthew Uroghide (Edo South) and Patrick Akinyelure (Ondo Central) – resigned from the party last week. LP has seven while the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, has two and the Social Democratic Party, three. The All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA and the Young Progressives Party, YPP have one each.
Although the Akpabio and Yari groups each claim to have 75 supporters, none appears to have a solid control over their supporters as of Saturday night. What can be said with certainty is that Tinubu and the governing party had done extensive mobilisation and lobbying to secure supporters to their cause.
In this light, the rank of the opposition has been broken. SDP has since declared support for the government. So did the NNPP, following the working alliance between the National Chairman of the party, Rabiu Kwakwanso and Tinubu.
Wike is said to have whipped the three senators from Rivers State into line in support of the President’s position. He has joined efforts with Senator-elect Dave Umahi of Ebonyi state, Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State and his Imo counterpart, Hope Uzodinma to rally the senators from the South-East, except Kalu, aspiring to be Yari’s deputy.
Coupled with this singular and group effort is the support from the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, which has thrown its weight behind the position of the government and APC. Given the influence of state governors on their senators, the Akpabio group appears to be coasting home steadily.
Former President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, is speculated to be mobilising the support of the PDP senators-elect for the Yari group as part of the fight for legislative independence, but how far this effort goes is yet to be seen.
The division in the PDP, coupled with the inability of all the other opposition parties to form a common front against the government’s anointed favoured candidates, has dealt a blow to his move.
Solomon Bob, a three-time PDP Senator from Rivers State, sums up the crack in the PDP when he told a national television service on Friday night that many of his party members would vote for the ruling party’s candidate because, “The party has majority members and by convention and rule of the thumb, they should produce the leadership.” He denied any influence by former Governor Wike, but no politically discerning Nigerian will believe him.
In the House of Representatives, the same scenario is playing out with APC controlling 176 members, followed by PDP with 112, LP, 37, NNPP 20, APGA 6, SDP 3 ADC 3 and YPP 3.
With governors influencing many legislators, many of whom are new and inexperienced, the government and ruling party may have the upper hand against their opponents in the final showdown.
TOO MANY NEWBIES IN NASS
A key factor in determining who and which group eventually emerges winner on Tuesday, June 13, 2023 is the high turnout of new and inexperienced members of the National Assembly: They are not only new to the intrigues leaving them exposed to persuasion but also to appeal for national unity in the name of patriotism, particularly by a combined weighty power of government and the ruling party. Indeed, only 30 senators won re-election out of a total 109 members. In the House of Representatives 130 out of 360 failed to get re-elected.
It tells a lot about the experience of Hon. Godwin Ogah from Abia State, an elected member of the LP whose party is challenging the election of President Tinubu in court and yet to accord the President any form of recognition.
Minutes after the elected members met with Tinubu on Thursday, Ogah gushed to the media: “Today is my best day, seeing my President talking. I never knew President Ahmed Tinubu is this intelligent and prepared to rule Nigeria. I saw the love, the character, the charisma and the belief that Nigeria can be a better nation.”
Amos Esele is the Acting Editor of THEWILL Newspaper. He has over two decades of experience on the job.
