By Emmanuel Ogodo
With less than one month to the inauguration of the 10th Assembly, gladiators have continued to heat up the polity of the two Nigerian parliaments: the Senate otherwise known as the Red Chambers and the House of Representatives, also known as the Green Chambers.
Specifically, the tussle to determine who succeeds Ahmed Lawan as Senate President has taken interesting and intriguing dimensions in recent weeks. Senators of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), who occupy majority of the seats in the Senate and their party, seem not to have come close to reaching an agreement to this effect.
No fewer than seven APC Senators had earlier declared interest to run for the number 3 citizen of the country. However, after consultations and internal politics that have played out recently, only four contestants seem to have re-emerged, even stronger: two from the North and the other two from the South.
They include Senators Orji Uzor Kalu (South East), Godswill Akpabio (South South), Abdulaziz Yari (North West) and Muhammed Musa (North Central).
Now, each of them lay claim to deserving fair play, and this to them means the Senate President emerging from their own geopolitical zone, given that the remaining two (South West and North East), out of the six geopolitical zones in the country, have produced President-elect and Vice President-elect respectively.
In a meeting with the National Working Committee (NWC) of the APC recently, Kalu, Yari and Musa expressed disagreement and dissatisfaction with the decision of the National Executive Council (NEC), in nominating Akpabio as a consensus candidate.
The candidacy of Senator Akpabio, though a nominee of APC NWC, including President-elect, Bola Tinubu, now seems jittery. Internal and external forces appear to have teamed up against his anointing. Recall that two senators from Delta ( part of Akpabio’s region), Ned Nwoko of PDP and Joel Onowakpo of APC, had earlier called for transparency in choosing who heads the 10th Senate, instead of endorsing him as many would have expected.
Senator Kalu, on his part, does not seem to have many obvious oppositions. At least, not from the South East, except for Senotor-elect Dave Umahi, who had declared support for Akpabio. But how much votes will he (Kalu), who had earlier written to the other 108 Senators and Senators-elect, concerning his Senate presidency ambition, garner from the other zones? Only time will tell.
Given that more Senators come from the North than the South, if ‘politics of the North’ should play out and take precedence over zonal and personal interests, Yari or Musa might have higher chances of clinching the contended position. The question however is, who will step down for who?
Politics the say, is a game of number. Akpabio, Kalu, Musa or Yari, who will wear the crown?
