By A. M Ibrahim

With 2019 elections concluded, the race for the senate presidency has already gathered momentum and in a bid to guard against the mistake of the past the APC, as the ruling party, has apparently, not only zoned the office of the senate president to the North East but has indeed, Zeroed down on one amongst the contestants from the zone namely, Ahmed Lawal, as its preferred candidate for the office.
Back in 2015, the APC did virtually the same thing when it tipped the same Ahmed Lawal for the office of the Senate president. However, in a somewhat twist of events and as God would have it, the current occupant of the office, Dr. Bukola Saraki, pulled a surprise by staging what political observers described as a palace coup; when he struck a working alliance with the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, which enabled him to secure the statutorily required two third (2/3) majority votes to be elected as president, while the PDP produced the Deputy Senate President in the person of Senator Ekweremadu
Although President Muhammadu Buhari did not seem to be visibly worried and had, indeed, publicly expressed readiness to co-exist and work harmoniously with whosoever was independently thrown up as President and Speaker of the Senate as well as House of Representatives respectively, his Party, the APC and some Political observers had viewed the development with a great deal of sense of reservations and of course, apprehension, maintaining that best practices all over the world dictated that the President should had a say in the selection of leadership of the National Assembly.
The argument in favour of having, at the helm of affairs, in the National Assembly, a Leadership that is on the same page with the executive, is to help minimize areas of friction and thus facilitate the smooth passage of bills. The general believe is that, this harmonious working relationship between the two arms of government, can be secured and sustained only on condition that the executive, at least, has an input in the process leading to the emergence of the leadership of the legislature. This is regardless of whether the processes adopted in the selection of the leadership of the legislature is consistent with the tenets and dictates of democracy or not, especially since the emphasis tends to be placed more on the extent to which the legislature remains subordinated to the will of the executive arm of government.
It is instructive to note that, while the circumstances of the emergence of DR. Bukola Saraki, as Senate President, might be largely questionable in terms of its propriety: how and why he disregarded the party’s directive, which initially zeroed in on Ahmed Lawal as the preferred candidate and of course, why and how he forged an unholy alliance with the PDP that even paved the way for a PDP member to emerge as Deputy senate president. Beyond this, however, Bukola’s emergence as Senate President, back in 2015, could hardly be questioned, or faulted purely from a democratic point of view. For not only did it satisfy all the prerequisites of democracy, it also tended to negate the concept of the winner takes all.
It is significant at this juncture to posit that what really went wrong with Dr. Saraki’s presidency of the senate had to do fundamentally with how it became a subject of victimization and witchunt by forces outside the senate, who were not only apparently displeased with the circumstances surrounding his emergence but who were also bent on manipulating the Red chamber through their surrogate largely in line with their strategic agenda and power calculus well ahead of time. As a matter of fact, Dr. Saraki had had cause on several occasions to accuse those forces as being largely behind not only his ordeal but also for what he wildly alleged amounted to the hijack of the presidency.
It is pertinent to assert that, not until he became senate president, Dr. Saraki had no history of a rebellious or radical tendency and going by his pedigree of serving at various times as a medical doctor, a bank chief executive, a special assistant to the president, a two term governor and of course, a senator, he had virtually no option than to be a conformist. However, his emergence as senate president and the response it provoked from those who felt offended naturally pushed him to the extreme position of adopting a more less confrontational or rather a hostile posture vis-à-vis the executive.
Thus in a bid to guard against repeating the mistake of the past, it is important that the issue should be put in and understood from, its right perspective. To put in a nutshell, DR. Saraki did not turn out to be a recalcitrant senate president fundamentally because the president had no say in his selection. Rather, his attitude and posture as senate president had more to do with an ensuing power struggle in the overall context of which control of the Senate was considered by each of the factions as strategic.
The lessons that APC needs to derive from its experience of not having the right person as president of the senate, is that apart from making sure that whosoever shall emerge as the next senate president must be a product of democratic process, the party too must guard against someone who is apparently identified with any of the existing power blocks or Godfathers that may wish to, by proxy, manipulate the Red chamber as an integral component of its overall strategic power calculus and scheming well ahead of 2023.
In this connection, the performance of the senate, under Obasanjo’s eight year uninterrupted presidency, characterized as it was, by superimposition albeit frequent turnover, of senate presidents, clearly and poignantly taught us the lesson that while you can, to some extent, successfully superimpose a senate president, you may not necessarily guarantee his stay in office for anything more than a short period of time. It is instructive to note that, both Senators David Mark and DR. Bukola Saraki enjoyed each a fairly and relatively long tenure of office only by virtue of the support they had had from the preponderant majority of the senators.
Finally, in assessing the right person to ascend the throne of the senate, caution must be exercised not to bring on board a candidate, who in view of his involvement in the past leadership tussle, will simply constitute a liability as opposed to asset to the red chamber in its bid at resolving the numerous challenges confronting it.

A.M. IBRAHIM
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