President Muhammadu Buhari may have
learnt from the scenario that happened in 2015 where Senator Bukola Saraki and
Hon. Yakubu Dogara emerged president of the senate and speaker House of
Representatives respectively against part wish as he’s said to have consented to
Ahmad Lawan as senate president and Femi Gbajabiamila as speaker of the House
of Representatives in the in-coming national assembly.
The move, leadership of the ruling
party, APC feel is a good move as it is believed to have sent signal to Bukola
Saraki who is alleged to be plotting to have a hand in making of leadership of
the senate. The move is also believe will make Senator Ali Ndume and Nkeiruka
Onyejeocha who are interested in the leadership role of the upper and lower
chamber to back down on their dream.
The duo of Lawan and Gbajabiamila who
are currently the leaders of the APC caucus in the upper and lower chambers of
the national assembly, enjoyed the support of the president in 2015 but Senate
President Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of reps, teamed
up with some Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmakers to edge them out.
While Lawan did not get the
opportunity to go head-to-head with Saraki, Gbajabiamila lost to Dogara by
eight votes.
However, Saraki is out of the way,
having left the APC for the PDP and lost his re-election bid.
Dogara is also not expected to put a
fight as PDP, his new party, does not have enough numbers in the house of reps.
In the red chamber, APC has 25 seats
more than PDP while the ruling is clearly ahead of PDP by 100 seats in the
green chamber.
Last week when he announced his
ambition to lead the senate, Lawan, who represents Yobe north, said the ruling
party will do things differently in choosing the leadership of the 9th national
assembly because it had learnt its lessons in 2015.
“We are not in any way thinking that
we will have crises; it is not what we are envisaging at all. But let me say
that our party, the APC, must have learnt its lessons, and therefore, the party
leadership will do something differently this time,” he had said at a press
conference in Abuja.
Lawan was elected into the House of
Representatives in 1999 and got into the senate in 2007. The 60-year-old is a
graduate of the University of Maiduguri where he read geography. He also has a
postgraduate diploma in land survey, an MSc and PhD in Remote Sensing and
Geographic Information System (GIS), all from the University of Cranfield,
United Kingdom.
On his part, Gbajabiamila, who
represents Surulere 1 federal constituency of Lagos state, is an ally of Bola
Tinubu, a national leader of the APC. He was first elected into the green
chamber in 2003.
A law graduate from the University
of Lagos; he started his career with the Bentley, Edu and Co law firm in Lagos
before he established his own firm, Femi Gbaja and Co. where he was principal
partner. Gbajabiamila later returned to John Marshall Law School in the US and
was said to have graduated top of his class, earning himself a juris doctorate.
He set up a law firm and had a brief stint of practice in the US after he
passed his Georgia bar exams in 2001. Later, he returned to Nigeria to join
politics.
The national working committee (NWC)
of the ruling party was in a meeting with the newly elected APC members in the House
of Representatives on Monday when this report was filed.
Speaking at the Yar’Adua Center,
Abuja, where the politicians gathered, Adams Oshiomole, national chairman of
the APC, made it clear that the purpose of the meeting is to ensure that the party
produces the leadership of the lower chamber.
“We will ensure that we have a
leadership of the national assembly that shares the vision of the executive. Although
we stick to separation of power and unless the various arms pursue the same agenda
it is difficult for the executive to fulfill its promises and legislative
backing is often require for most of the executive actions,” Oshiomhole said.
Additional report from The Cable
