Ranking Ex-Governors Move To Take Over Senate Presidency

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Former governors who are ranking senators in the incoming 9th Session of the National Assembly are resolved to ensure that one of them emerges the next Senate president.

Some of the ex-governors said to be
eyeing the Senate top job include Danjuma Goje (Gombe) and Abdullahi
Adamu (Nasarawa), while Senators Ahmed Lawan (Yobe), Aliyu Ndume (Borno)
and Benjamin Uwajumogu (Imo) are also in the race. Expectedly, the
delay by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to initiate a power sharing
formula among the geopolitical regions has led to all manner of
groupings and re-groupings in the race for the seat of president of the
9th Senate.

When the seat of Senate president was zoned to the
South East and North Central geopolitical zones during the Obasanjo and
Yar’Adua presidency respectively, only senators from those regions
stepped forward to contest the leadership of the Third Arm of
government. But at the moment, it is a free for all.

The
campaign is chaotic and multi-pronged in nature, a situation that may be
difficult for the APC leadership to manage. A senator who does not want
to be named said some members may feel dissatisfied with APC’s late
hour settlement and decide to negotiate with the opposition senators the
way outgoing Senate president Bukola Saraki did four years ago.

While
senators from the North East, North Central and the South West are
flexing their political muscles based on how APC fared in the last
elections in their zones, the South East is calling for an all-inclusive
APC government. LEADERSHIP Sunday gathered that former governors newly
elected as senators want one of them to be elected the next Senate
president.

However, some high ranking senators who have been
re-elected have published their curriculum vitae to let Nigerians know
how prepared they are to provide good leadership at the Senate.
According to the senator, the only possibility for the APC to avoid the
manner Saraki, Ike Ekweremadu and Yakubu Dogara emerged as National
Assembly leaders on June 9, 2015 against the wishes of the ruling party
is for the governing party to come up with a power sharing framework as a
matter of urgency.

He said such framework must be all-inclusive
and devoid of sentiment against regions that voted for the party or
not. “Exclusion and non-appreciation of the Nigerian diversity stood
firmly as some of the major faults of the Buhari administration between
2015 and 2019.

‘’I have no doubt that President Buhari can put
an end to the continued alienation of South East, for instance, by being
the statesman we all want him to be. This he can do using his powers as
national leader of APC to ensure that the South East, the third leg of
the nation’s tripod, is brought within leadership circles by making sure
the president of the 9th Senate is selected from the South East’’, the
senator said.

The former governors and deputy governors in the
Senate have vowed that one of them will become the Senate president in
the 9th Senate, LEADERSHIP Sunday learnt from trusted sources. The
governors-turned-senators say it would be wrong for them to come to the
Senate and be subservient to their former subjects who used to prostrate
before ‘His Excellency’’.

The 15 former governors coming to the
9th Senate include Orji Kalu (Abia North), Theodore Orji (Abia
Central), Kashim Shettima (Borno Central), Sam Egwu (Ebonyi North),
Gabriel Suswan (Benue East), Danjuma Goje (Gombe Central), Ibikunle
Amosu (Ogun Central), Chimaroke Nnamani (Enugu East), Ibrahim Shekarau
(Kano Central), Tanko Al-Makura (Nasarawa South), Abdullahi Adamu
(Nasarawa North), Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto North), Ibrahim Geidam (Yobe
East), Abdul’Aziz Yari (Zamfara West) and Adamu Aliero (Kebbi Central).

LEADERSHIP
Sunday gathered that the ex-governors had collectively resolved that,
irrespective of party affiliation and their individual ranking, they
will rally round one of them to be elected as the next Senate president.
It is also believed that the current Senate leadership is chairing this
group and rooting for a high ranking senator who is an ex-governor.

It
was learnt that the ex-governor is being favoured because he was rather
non-aligned or did at no time work against the interest of the Senate
leadership all the while it was facing pressure from the APC and the
presidency. The senator was said to have been tutored not to talk to
the press about his aspiration, and not to discuss it with anybody
except highly trusted APC senators. A senator from the North Central is
said to be coordinating the campaign for the emergence of the
ex-governor as the Senate president.

According to a senator who
is in the know of the plot, after their inauguration on Monday, June 10,
2019, a member of their group would get up to nominate him irrespective
of APC’s choice candidate. He said, ‘’The block vote of opposition
senators which would not be fewer than 40 will be given to him; and with
pliable APC senators we shall mobilise, he would certainly emerge. One
of us shall emerge, by the Grace of God, as his deputy. ‘

’You
know, President Buhari does not usually care about the fate that befalls
his supporters; hence by the time we promise some APC senators juicy
committee chairmanship, they would readily prefer it to the so-called
adherence to APC party directives.” He remarked that the former state
governors of those in the forefront for the Senate presidency were
elected senators on February 23. They are Ibrahim Geidam who comes from
the same state as Senate leader, Ahmed Lawan (Yobe), and Kashmir
Shettima, from Senator Mohammed Ndume’s Borno State. ‘

’Do you
expect them to come here and be answering ‘Yes sir, Your Excellency’ to
these senators in case one of them emerges as Senate president? That is
why all the governors have agreed to team up for one of them to
emerge,’’ he said. Meanwhile, LEADERSHIP Sunday gathered that Senators
Ahmed Lawan, Aliyu Ndume, Ovie Omo-Agege (Delta), Abdullahi Adamu,
Benjamin Uwajumogu (APC, Imo North) are vigorously campaigning for the
number three position in the country.

Over a week ago, a group
known as ‘’National Committee for Legislative Development and Good
Governance’’ has published the curriculum vitae of Senator Ahmed Lawan
under the banner of ‘’The Senate Leadership Question: Why Senator Ahmad
Lawan is the option’’. The group, which is being coordinated by one
Iniobong Ukeme John, stated that the last four years had been the worst
years of executive/legislative relationship since the return of
democracy due to unnecessary bickering, power struggle and selfish
agenda to the detriment of national unity and development. ‘

’We
must not allow enemies of Nigeria’s progress block and sabotage
President Buhari from fighting corruption, developing the economy and
providing security to lives and property of Nigerians. ‘’It is time to
search, sieve, support and encourage capable hands to lead the National
Assembly for a purposeful and robust executive/legislative relationship.
‘’Senator Lawan possesses unequal qualification and is most qualified
to lead the 9th Senate in the interest of a robust and purposeful
executive/legislative relationship to build an enduring democracy that
will effectively and efficiently deliver democratic dividends to
Nigerians’’, the group stated.

It is widely speculated that the
APC would like to have Ahmed Lawan as the Senate president and Femi
Gbajabiamila as the Speaker of the House of Representatives as the party
had planned, and failed, in 2015. It would be recalled that the party’s
decision to throw up Lawan and Gbajabiamila then led to a schism among
APC lawmakers, enabling the PDP to capitalise on the division and
determine the outcome of the June 9, 2015 elections in the National
Assembly.

In what could be described as a parliamentary coup
d’etat, Senator Bukola Saraki and Hon. Yakubu Dogara defied their then
party, APC, by emerging Senate President and Speaker of the House of
Representatives in a contest that was characterised by subterfuge and
guile. That set the tone for the cancerous executive-legislative
bickering that slowed down governance in the last four years. But the
party is said to be dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s to forestall a
repeat of such outcome. Despite his purported interest, Senator Ndume
has not publicly declared his ambition to be Senate president and no
group has backed him in the media, but he is said to be fraternising
with the henchmen in the presidency and believes he would be compensated
for his role in the high turnover of votes cast for the president in
the North East on February 23, 2019.

He was the APC Presidential
Campaign Council North East zonal director. Curiously, Senator
Omo-Agege, who said last week that President Buhari would give direction
to APC on the subject of Senate leadership, has suddenly declared
support for Senator Ahmed Lawan’s quest for the job. One would have
expected that he would be pairing with Senator Abdullahi Adamu.

Two
of them and eight other senators staged a walk-out on their Senate on
February 14, 2018 in protest against the adoption of the report by the
Senate and House of Representatives Joint Committee on the Amendment to
the Electoral Act The ten pro-Buhari senators led by Senator Abdullahi
had kicked against the new sequence of elections adopted by the apex
legislative chamber following the amendment of the 2010 Electoral Act.
The provision in the bill that irked them was the proposal for the
presidential election to come last, rather than first.

The
eight other aggrieved APC senators at the time included Binta Garba
(Adamawa), the late Ali Wakili (Bauchi), Kurfi Umaru (Katsina), Andrew
Uchendu (Rivers), Abdullahi Danbaba (Sokoto), Yahaya Abdullahi (Kebbi),
Abu Ibrahim (Katsina), and Benjamin Uwajumogu (Imo). Some groups from
the North Central where Senator Abdullahi comes from insist that the
zone should be allowed to retain the position of the Senate president
since the North West and South West are retaining the positions of
president and vice president respectively.

And despite being the
zone that gave the APC the least votes in the general elections, the
South East is also angling for the Senate top job. In a statement
released to newsmen by a socio-political group known as South East
Youths and Elders’ Forum to congratulate President Buhari on February
28, the group urged the president and the APC to zone the post of the
Senate president to South East geo-political zone since the president
and vice president came from the North and South West regions.

The
group also noted that since the party maintained its early zoning
arrangements, which zoned the post of president to the North, the vice
president to the South West and Senate president to the South East,
before the party could not produce any senator from the region in 2015
presidential and National Assembly elections, the party should therefore
make a categorical statement reaffirming its commitment to the zoning
of the Senate presidency to the South East region since the party now
has two APC senators from the zone.

It is on this premise that
the likes of Benjamin Uwajumogu, who was formerly Imo State Assembly
speaker, is latching on to canvass for the seat. Orji Kalu is also said
to be arguing that he is also a ranking senator by virtue of his
three-month sojourn at the National Assembly during the ill-fated Third
Republic during General Babangida’s era. LEADERSHIP Sunday learnt that
the APC leadership is expected to meet in Abuja next week to agree on a
zoning formula for the six presiding and principal officers of the
Senate ahead of its inauguration on June 10. The APC won 65 senatorial
seats as against 40 seats secured by the opposition Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) in the February 23 National Assembly polls.

Apart
from the post of Senate president and deputy Senate president, the
other offices include Senate leader, deputy Senate leader, Senate chief
whip and Senate deputy whip. In line with tradition, the clerk of the
National Assembly, Alhaji Muhammed Sani-Omolori, would on June 10,
2019, read the proclamation letter of President Buhari at the plenary to
order the inauguration of the 9th National Assembly.

After the
inauguration, which also signifies the end of the 8th National Assembly,
the clerk will call for nominations from senators. By the senate rules,
only 38 senators need to be present to form a quorum. The newly elected
senators will then elect both the Senate president and the deputy
Senate president. At the same time, the House of Representatives members
will elect the Speaker and the deputy Speaker.

Source:- Leadershipng

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