Results of the Senate and House of Representatives elections have continued to generate debate in Nigeria. In this report, Assistant Editor, Onyedi Ojiabor, in Abuja, gave an intimate account of what transpired during the election of Senators Abubakar Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu at the upper chamber and the way forward
The ripples being generated from the controversial election of Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki and Senator Ike Ekweremadu as President of the Senate and Deputy President of the Senate respectively continues to spread in the polity. Opinions are sharply divided about the propriety of the election.
The D-Day for the election started with a total barricade of all entrances into the National Assembly by the police. Workers arrived for their usual duties, only to be confronted by over-zealous policemen who used their operational vehicles to block all entry points into the National Assembly.
The explanation of the police was that “order from above” mandated them not to allow anybody to enter the National Assembly complex.
Even though scores of hapless workers, including some security operatives who were locked out kicked and cursed loudly and endlessly, the police did not budge.
Some of the workers, who arrived as early as 6am for an event that was billed for 10am, were exhausted as they moved from one distant entry point to another in desperate bid to access the National Assembly Complex.
Reprieve finally came around 9.30 am when a counter “order from above” was said to have been received by the same policemen.
At the National Assembly complex, tension was high. Senators and House of Representatives members, mostly of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) began to arrive in clusters. Nobody knew what was amiss. Only a few senators elected on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC), the majority party, were seen around. Tension continued to heighten. What could be the problem, some observers wondered aloud.
Few minutes to 10am when the inauguration of the senate was supposed to commence, information filtered in that President Muhammadu Buhari had summoned APC Senators-elect and House members-elect to a brief meeting at the International Conference Center, Abuja.
It was equally suggested – unofficially though – that the inauguration was to be delayed to allow the majority party senators-elect and House members-elect to arrive from the ICC.
The touted delay of the inauguration turned out not to be as the Clerk to the National Assembly, Salisu Maikasuwa, kick-started the inauguration of the Senate at exactly 10am.
The Senate chamber was virtually empty when the process of the inauguration started. Majority of APC Senators-elect were nowhere to be found. Only twelve APC Senators-elect including Saraki , Dino Melaye, Ahmed Rufai Sani, Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, Ibrahim Abdullahi Gobir, Mohammed Shaaba Lafiagi, Rafiu Adebayo Ibrahim, Mohammed Danjuma Goje, Mohammed Ali Ndume, Mohammed Ohiare and Francis Asekhame Alimikhena were seen in the Senate chamber at the start of the inauguration.
Majority of PDP Senators-elect who sat comfortably in the chamber were observed using eye contacts to pass messages to one another. Some PDP governors, former Senators, former House of Representatives members also sat in the chamber. Tension continued to build as tongues began to wag. Some concerned observers openly asked where majority of APC Senators-elect were. Nobody answered. It was an unimaginable situation, an observer uttered.
At 10am prompt, the Clerk to the National Assembly called the Senate to Order and proceeded to read the Presidential Proclamation of the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The ritual of reading of Presidential Proclamation of the National Assembly concluded, the Clerk mandated the Clerk to the Senate, Ben Efeturi, to proceed with the roll call.
Instead of Efeturi, the Deputy Clerk to the Senate, Adedotun Durojaiye, took over proceedings and conducted the roll call.
The Deputy Clerk announced after the exercise that only 57 Senators-elect were in the chamber.
He did not stop there; Durojaiye also gave the quorum required for the day’s business – election of presiding officers of the Senate – as 37.
The roll call and quorum established, the Deputy Clerk asked for proposal to take the Chair of the Office of the Senate President.
Former Zamfara State Governor, Senator Ahmed Rufai Sani, promptly proceeded to propose Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki, to take the chair of the Senate President. The indefatigable Kogi West Senator, Dino Melaye, sprang up from his seat and seconded Senator Sani’s proposal. Saraki was immediately called to accept or decline the proposal. He accepted to take the chair of the Senate President.
The Clerk called for further proposal. There was no response. The Clerk for the second time called for further proposal. There was dead silence in the chamber. Tension increased. It was a done deal. Saraki had emerged. The Clerk announced that in the absence of further proposal, Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki, had been duly elected to take the chair of the Senate President of the Eight Senate.
There was initial seeming unbelief on the faces of observers in the Senate gallery due to the rapidity of the events that produced Saraki.
Inside the chamber however, Saraki’s loyalists, the ‘rebel’ APC lawmakers, as some refer to them, spontaneously launched into victory dance as they took to the floor of the chamber to encircle their man.
The victory dance over, Clerk to the National Assembly administered the oath of office on Saraki, apparently to seal his election as the President of the Senate. The whole drama, called election of the President of Nigeria’s 8th Senate was concluded within 30 minutes.
It was after the election and inauguration of Saraki that APC Senators-elect who went to honour the invitation of Mr. President for a brief meeting started rushing into the chamber. By then it was late.
Before the APC Senators-elect arrived, the election and swearing-in of Saraki had been concluded without the participation of 51 of them.
The next business of the day was the election of the Deputy President of the Senate.
Senator George Thompson Sekibo proposed Senator Ike Ekweremadu. The proposal was seconded by Senator-elect, Olaka Nwogu.
Further proposal was made in the person of Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume.
At the end of the election, the Deputy Clerk of the Senate announced that Ndume received 20 votes while Ekweremadu got 54 votes.
He also said that one Senator-elect abstained. Ekweremadu was immediately inaugurated as the Deputy President of the Senate to the applause of his supporters.
If you thought that the election and the inauguration of Saraki and Ekweremadu was the end of the tussle for the office of the Senate President, you may have to think twice.
The APC leadership and the Senator Barnabas Gemade-led Senate Unity Forum have already said that the emergence of Saraki and Yakubu Dogara as Senate President and Speaker, House of Representatives, is unacceptable to the party.
“There can be no higher level of treachery, disloyalty and insincerity within any party than what Saraki and Dogara did,” the APC said.
The APC “decried a situation in which some people, based on nothing but inordinate ambition and lack of discipline and loyalty, will enter into unholy alliance with the very same people whom the party and indeed the entire country worked hard to replace and sell out the hard won victory of the party.”
Some observers are of the opinion that what played out on Tuesday at the National Assembly was highly negotiated.
It was said that Ali Ndume who was originally promised the position of Deputy Senate President in the Saraki camp, appeared to be even happier than Ekweremadu who defeated him.
Perhaps it may be appropriate to ask where party discipline was in the whole scenario. Where was party supremacy?
When did party politics become a free for all and a zero-sum game; a situation where a party has the right to create platform for candidates to emerge but lacks the right to say who occupies what political position.
Conspiracy theorists have been at work since the emergence of Saraki and Dogara to explain what happened.
The theorists are canvassing forensic examination of the entire scenario to isolate who did what in the alliance between the APC ‘rebel’ senators and the PDP ‘hawkish’ senators.
What role did the immediate past President of the Senate, Senator David Mark, play to produce Saraki/Ekweremadu Senate Presidency? Was it the case of the voice of Jacob but the hand of Esau?
At what point did the APC rebel Senators decide to forge an alliance with PDP Senators to deliver Saraki?
Perhaps the explanation of the former Chairman, Senate Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs, Enyinnaya Abaribe, may be instructive.
Asked how the APC Senators and their PDP counterparts struck a deal, Abaribe said there was absolutely no deal. The Abia State born Senator said what happened was that PDP Senators saw an opportunity and seized it with both hands. Just like that?
Another Abia PDP Senator, Mao Ohuabunwa (Abia North) in his reaction said with the election of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy President of the Senate, the era of winner takes all in the country’s politics may have been over.
Ohuabunwa also said that Nigerians should be happy because the development of the All Progressives Congress (APC) majority party sharing elevated office with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) minority party is bound to prove a beneficial political engineering.
He was of the view that before Tuesday’s election of Abubakar Bukola Saraki (APC) and Ekweremadu (PDP) as Senate President and Deputy Senate President respectively, what is common in the country had always been that the majority party takes everything.
He described the emergence of the duo as victory for democracy and victory for Nigeria and underscored the fact that once elections had been concluded and winners emerged, the issue of party politics should be under played in the interest of the country.
He said, “First and foremost, I would want to believe that every Nigerian should be happy because this is victory for democracy, it is victory for the legislature and victory for Nigeria.
“You know that before now, the system had always been the party in majority taking everything. That has been the system we are used to and you find out that within that system, we always fight on party line but on Tuesday we came to speak with one voice.
“We have realised that what is important is Nigeria and once you have been elected from your constituency, from your party, you are addressed as the Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not senator of PDP or APC.
“What is important is that the law we make is not law for political parties, it is law for good governance and peace of the whole country.
“So, what we have done is to say that we have decided to put away every other thing that had divided us before now to come together so that you won’t say oh PDP has taken or APC has taken everything.
“Now, we have decided to share position so that together we can work, speak with one voice and move Nigeria forward.
“From what has happened, the spirit of former President Gookluck Jonathan is taking over; his spirit is hovering everywhere because he came for the first time, what people thought is not possible for a black Africa, for a sitting president to lose election and concede, Jonathan did.
“He did that and now what also people thought will not happen in Nigeria has just happened for two opposing parties to share positions.
“So, we should be optimistic, I expect every Nigerian that loves Nigeria to be happy that this has happened and I think this is victory for democracy.
“PDP has 49 senators and if you watch, they were about 76 or so senators that sat and if you even look at the position of the election for the Deputy Senate President, we have 54 for Ike Ekweremadu and 20 for Mohammed Ali Ndume.
“If you add that which is 74 votes with one abstention, so we have 74 already. What it means is that what happened on the floor had APC and PDP. APC members were there and also as lawmakers, we should also be law abiding.
“Everything that happened on the floor of the Senate was within the confinement of the law, because the law says first, the constitution gave the National Assembly the powers to make laws for its own procedure and the law says that it is one third that forms a quorum and the quorum should actually be 38.
“So, the Senate was well constituted because the Clerk of the National Assembly was the one who presided and I know that if the Senate was not properly constituted he wouldn’t have gone ahead to inaugurate the Senate.”
A worrisome trend, observers say, is that what happened on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday may mark the beginning of the return of the infamous banana peel in the Senate.
It may be difficult to completely figure out who did what in what has been dubbed a parliamentary coup d’etat against the APC, what is obvious is that a dangerous seed may have been planted among the progressives.
