As the battle for the leadership of the Senate intensifies ahead of the inauguration of the 9th National Assembly in June, the camps of the senators-elect seeking to take over the leadership of the Red Chamber have shifted their attention to opposition members,Akelicious can report.
Already, the governing All Progressives Congress (APC)
has settled for one of the aspirants and current Senate Leader Ahmad
Lawan (APC, Yobe) as its choice for the Senate top job. However, Senator
Ali Ndume (APC,Borno), himself a former Senate leader, has vowed to go
against his party and contest the position. Another senator said to be
eyeing the position is Danjuma Goje who is said to be working from
behind the scenes to achieve his ambition.
Akelicious gathered
that with the party, APC, already in favour of Senator Lawan, the
contenders are looking outside for support.
Among the camps, it
was gathered that Team Lawan, Team Ndume and Team Goje are actively
wooing senators-elect from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and some
state governors are now being contacted to lobby their home senators to
support specific candidates.
Akelicious reports that while the
governing APC has majority in the 9th Assembly with 65 senators-elect,
the PDP has about 41 in its fold, while Young Peoples Party has only
Ifeanyi Uba for the moment, as the first-time senator-elect is perceived
to be flirting with the party in power.
Of the 65 APC
senators-elect, the South West have 14, South East, 2, North-West, 20,
South-South, 3, North-East, 14 and North-Central,12.
Since the
election for the leadership of the National Assembly would be conducted
at the chambers, it was gathered that almost all the camps seeking to
take over the leadership positions have now focused their attention on
the opposition PDP.
Akelicious gathered that most of the camps
are banking on the fact that if they can get block votes from the main
opposition political party, it would be much easier to win the in-house
contest.
APC has zoned the office of the Senate President to the
North East while the office of the deputy Senate president was also
zoned to the South-South with Ovie Omo-Agege (APC, Delta Central), fully
in the race.
While the alignments and realignments is taking
shape, a strategist for the APC in the 2019 general elections, who is
also knowledgeable about National Assembly politics, has faulted the
party chairman, Adams Oshiohmole, for exposing the party’s game plan
much earlier.
The strategist, who prefers to remain anonymous,
said there are different camps now realigning which could be detrimental
to the party’s wish to take control of the leadership of the party.
“You
know, for now things are not going smoothly. A lot of snags created by
the party could be detrimental,” the strategist said, adding that what
happened in 2015 could repeat itself in 2019.
Speaking to
Akelicious, a chieftain of the APC and former minister of sport, Bala
Ka’oje, said he had advised the party to zone the principal offices as
early as possible but the party leadership ignored the advice.
“I
advised that we should zone National Assembly positions as quickly as
possible. If you zone positions, everyone knows what is coming to him.
If you zoned the office of the Senate president to the North-eastern
states for example, there is nothing wrong in nominating three people
and forwarding their names to the zone for them to select one person,”
Ka’oje said, adding that presenting one candidate in a zone with 14
senators-elect could be detrimental.
“All we heard was that the
chairman of the party nominated the president of the Senate and the
speaker of the House,” Ka’oje said.
According to him, when it comes to National Assembly politics, things are not done like that.
“When
we were in the other party, we contributed money to assist contestants.
Did he do that? Here he is telling them they most obey him. Obedience
is reciprocal. You can’t appoint people to lead the Senate and the
House. It’s a problem in the APC and that problem will continue to
happen because the party is not doing the right thing.
“Oshiohmole
is only interested on his interest. See what we faced in Rivers,
Zamfara, Cross River and the rest of the states? He keeps making too
many errors that are bad for the party,” Ka’oje added.
He remarked that the party’s problems are due to lack of consultation.
“The
party chairman is claiming he knows everything. No one wants to consult
people like us. Yes, we won election but it was a fierce contest. The
PDP took some states belonging to us. I’ve been to the APC chairman’s
house more than five times. I left my card but he never looked for me.
They don’t care about the advice we offer even in the newspaper and that
could be detrimental in the National Assembly elections,” Ka’oje added.
Weighing
in on the Senate leadership race, the pioneer APC national vice
chairman in charge of North East, Dr Umar Duhu, said that both Ndume and
Lawan are from the same bloc of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party
(ANPP) and that both are qualified to occupy the seat of the chairman of
the National Assembly.
Duhu, who expressed displeasure at the
way the party leadership is treating some of its members, said there is
no way the party can control its members when it did not play a major
part in ensuring their election.
“You do not also expect that an
elected senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who paid through his
nose to be candidate of the party and spent heavily to get elected,
could easily obey a party whose leadership talks from both sides of
their mouths. I do not see any directive handed over to the elected
legislators working; rather, the party must go begging and apologising
to Nigerians for most of their lapses to get the party working again.
“Unless
the APC, as a party, purges itself of disloyal and self seeking members
that shamelessly worked against the interest of APC at all levels
during the 2019 general election, no right thinking Nigerian will take
the directives of the leadership seriously. I will not also be surprised
when a repeat of the 8th assembly comes to the fore,” Duhu added.
Speaking
on the contestants suitability for the job, he said: “Both Senators
Ahmed Lawan and Ali Ndume are of the same Constituency, the defunct
ANPP, while Sen Danjuma Goje is from a different bloc. In terms of
qualifications, all of them are qualified to take the 9th Senate to the
next level.”
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