It is said that you can’t give what you don’t have. So it isn’t surprising that the outgoing President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, missed the point when, according to an April 2 report, he “advised political party leaders to allow elected federal lawmakers to choose their leaders on the day of inauguration in order to achieve stability of the 9th National Assembly.”
There is no doubt that Saraki, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), targeted the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), whose members will be in the majority in the 9th National Assembly. Under normal circumstances, the APC is expected to produce the principal officers of the next federal legislature.
Saraki had talked to journalists after a lecture by the Clerk to the National Assembly, Mohammed Sani-Omolori, at an orientation programme for newly elected federal legislators in Abuja. He said: “The point I am making is that we should not make too much noise on the process of electing presiding officers. What is important is for the members of the Senate to decide who is the best to lead them, so that they can have stability.”
Considering how Saraki became Senate President in 2015 when he was an APC member, his words show that he learnt little or nothing from the scandalous episode. He attained the position by scheming, pure and simple. Saraki’s political manoeuvrings had got him the office against his party’s preference. But, predictably, it was a Pyrrhic victory; and it worked against him at the helm of the Senate.
Saraki’s anti-party plot to get the top seat in the Senate had resulted in a strange power-sharing arrangement. Normally, the Senate President and the Deputy Senate President should have been members of the majority party. But a member of the minority party, Ike Ekweremadu of the PDP, became Saraki’s deputy in a leadership combination that left a lot be desired.
The APC’s response to Saraki’s advice was predictable. The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Lanre Isa-Onilu, said: “The position of the party remains that those positions that belong to the majority party belong to us. Members of the minority party should mind their own business. They should find a way of occupying the positions that belong to them. It is not in their place to start telling us what to do and what not to do.”
Indeed, Saraki needs to learn to distinguish between what is normal and what is abnormal.