Crisis without end

There seems to be no end in sight on the lingering crisis in the Senate over its leadership as anti- Bukola Saraki senators vow to fight on. DGossip247 reports

Six weeks after the inauguration of the National Assembly, the friction between the winners and losers in the contest for the leadership positions of presiding and principal officers in the Senate is yet to be resolved. Members of the Senate Unity Forum (SUF), a group of Senators who campaigned for Senator Ahmad Lawan’s Senate presidency, appear not to have enjoyed any pacification in the handling of the differences and grievances generated in the course of the jostle for the various leadership positions in the Eighth Senate.

Traditionally, one of the easiest ways of resolving political crisis in societies is for various individuals and groups involved in disputes to converge and reach compromises in areas where there are disagreements between and or among the opposing political interests. However, in the case of the conflict engulfing the Eighth Senate over the formation and configuration of its leadership, the stakeholders are miles away from applying this inherent traditional remedy in conflict resolution. In the present circumstance, the “winner takes all” syndrome, which has been the pivotal cause of most crises in Nigeria’s political experience over the years, is playing out. At the initial stage of the struggle, two factional pressure groups resolutely stood out to fight for the leadership of the Senate. The SUF and the Like Minds Senators, which worked for the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki as Senate President are on a collision course. There is no doubt that the main grouse of the SUF, which made it seem to vow to continue to fight the President of the Senate and his team is the failure of Saraki and his support group to call them to a roundtable to resolve their differences. They insist that after Lawan missed the number one Senate seat, the position of Majority Leader should be given to him as a compensation.

Corroborating the position that they actually wanted the crisis to be resolved through dialogue, the SUF, on Saturday June 13, gave some conditions to pacify their grievances. They first demanded the immediate resignation of Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, as part of conditions that would make them recognise Senator Saraki as President of the Senate. Senator Kabir Marafa (Zamfara Central), who is the most vocal member of the group, had however clarified that his group had nothing personal against Saraki and Ekweremadu but they were against the process which brought them to power, which he said, negated the position of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as a party and the principle of party supremacy, in constituting the Senate leadership. He also insisted that the members of the Like Minds Senators must explain why they disregarded all the arrangements put in place by APC leaders to produce consensus candidates for the posts of Senate President and Deputy Senate President. Marafa said: “Our colleagues, the Like Minds Senators, on three occasions failed to honour the directive of the party for an arrangement to produce consensus candidates for the Senate President and Deputy Senate President. They refused to take part in the mock election when 35 APC senators elected Senators Ahmad Lawan and George Akume as the party’s consensus candidates for the two top positions in the Senate.”

The group further argued that Ekweremadu must resign his position because he needed at least 55 senators to emerge as Deputy Senate President Ekweremadu was elected by 54 senators, while his opponent in the race and current Senate Leader, Senator Ali Ndume polled 20 votes. The crisis further deteriorated when on June 20 the Like Mind Senators vowed to resist alleged moves by Senator Bola Tinubu and other party leaders to impose Lawan and Akume as the Senate Leader and deputy, respectively. Senators Ahmed Yerima and Danjuma Goje declared this position when they spoke with journalists in Abuja, warning that the plans by the leadership of the APC to fill the remaining four principal officers positions with ranking members of the SUF was totally unacceptable and would be vehemently resisted. With the vow not to concede any appreciable leadership position to the SUF by the Saraki group, the disgruntled senators therefore, seem to have made a retaliative move not to cooperate with the Senate leadership. In fact, the speculation all over the place is that the SUF is on a revenge mission, which terminal goal is to remove Saraki and Ekweremadu from the office. This is why it has gone to the extent of faulting virtually everything done by the leadership, and continuously proclaimed the emergence of the principal officers as borne out of illegal and illegitimate process. Fuelling the crisis further is the alleged doctoring of the Senate Standing Orders 2015, which the SUF described as a fraud and petitioned the Inspector-General of Police to investigate and prosecute those fingered as architects of the purported forged document.

Based on the petition, the Police subsequently quizzed the leadership of the 7th Senate, including Senators David Mark, Ekweremadu; former Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba and the former Chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Senator Ita Enang. The SUF has also positioned itself to fight the leadership on the issue of committee sharing, as it threatened to reject and resist the equality principle stipulated in the 2015 Senate Standing Order for the distribution of Senate Standing Committees. Order 3(4) of the 2015 Senate Standing Order, stipulates that the committees be shared equally among the six geo-political zones of the country, irrespective of political party affiliation.

According to this principle, each zone is expected to get at least nine committee chairmanship seats out of the 57 Senate committees that will be set up by the chamber in due course. The Order states: “The appointment of Senators as chairmen and members of committees shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the six geo-political zones of the country and there shall be no predominance of Senators from a few geo-political zones.” However, in previous assemblies, distribution of chairmanship positions of the 57 committees have always been done in favour of senators of the ruling party and ranking in status.

The PDP enjoyed this privileged up to the 7th Senate. The alteration of this principle by the new provision has, however, provoked agitation from the factional group of the ruling APC, which is opposed to Saraki’s emergence as President of the Senate. Consequently, the aggrieved senators said that they will ensure that the new sharing arrangement, which gave advantage to the minority party, the PDP, does not stand. As Nigerians were hoping to see the Saraki and the Lawan’s factions resolve the crisis through dialogue, the situation aggravated at the weekend when the anti-Saraki senators reinforced its vow to make the current Senate leadership revisit the appointment of principal officers. The group threatened that it would compel Saraki to revisit the appointment of principal officers which he earlier carried out on June 25, the day the Senate embarked on Sallah recess.

According to the spokesman of the anti- Saraki senators, Senator Marafa, the ranking rule of the Senate was violated in the appointment of the presiding officers despite the fact that APC had properly guided the presiding officers by nominating ranking senators for the leadership positions. He lamented that Saraki disregarded the party’s directive by inaugurating fresh senators as principal officers contrary to the provision of the Senate Standing Order, which stipulates that leadership positions should be given to the ranking members.

The anti-Saraki senators said: “They violated rule 3 (2) to appoint both Senators Ali Ndume and Bala Ibn Na’Allah as leader and deputy leader of the Senate respectively and now we hear another alleged absurdity that Senator Godswill Akpabio may emerge Senate Minority Leader.” They further alleged that Akpabio was being favoured high above his seniors in the chamber contrary to the provisions of order 3 (2). The group observed that Senators Eyinnaya Abaribe, James Manager, George Sekibo, Emmanuel Paulker, Emmanuel Bwacha, Sonni Ogbuoji, Andy Uba, Uche Ekwunife, and Owan Enoh, among others, should not be in chamber and a fresher like Akpabio becomes their leader. Marafa, who is highly enraged by the turn of events in the jostle for the eighth Senate leadership positions, said: “I swear to God, we will not allow this impunity to stand and a fresh one to be added.

By the way won’t somebody ask him, who constituted these caucuses they are talking about? “Who is the chairman or leader of North-West caucus for example? Who is the secretary? If there is, who appointed or elected them, where and using which law? “We all know how the leadership of the political parties emerge. We know the supremacy of the political party (section 65 -2b) of the constitution. Let somebody tell us the supremacy of any caucus and where it is hinged. “May be they want stalemate in the eighth Senate looking at how they are running the place. They better shut it permanently than to reconvene and attempt to run it without respecting the rules. “Oga Senate President, please read order one. They are misleading you. Nigeria no spoil reach this level, God forbid. We will force you on resumption to read order 1 and proceed by its provision.

Unless if you want to reduce the Red Chamber into a jungle where everybody will do what he or she likes to do and nobody can call anybody to order! “Sir, you (Senate President) are the custodian and greatest beneficiary of the content of that Red book. If you choose to violate it, we would help you to bring yourself down.” Saraki had on Thursday June 25, before the Senate went on recess, read letters from APC zonal caucuses nominating Ndume (Borno South) as Senate leader, Bala Ibn Na’Allah (Kebbi South) as Deputy Leader and Francis Alimikhena (Edo North) as Deputy Majority Whip. With the lingering crisis in the Senate, and the SUF not willing to retreat in the battle against the leadership, Nigerians are worried that the situation will retard legislative effectiveness and efficiency of the eighth Senate, to the detriment of the masses, who have high expectations from all the arms of government for quick delivery of good governance, in view of the worsening economic hardship in the country.