10th Senate divided over race for principal offices; Senators angry with Akpabio

Cold war has been existing in the 10th Senate ahead of the resumption, next Tuesday, there are strong indications that the battle for Senate Majority leader has polarised Northern and Southern Senators, especially those from the South West.

This was as northern senators intensified their protests and pushed to produce the majority leader.

Stakeholders in the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, are also locked in internal squabbles that appear to be hurting the chances of its members eyeing the National Assembly minority slots.

With the election of Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Deputy Senate President Jibrin Barau penultimate week, the focus has shifted to other principal officers; namely: Majority Leader, Minority Leader, Deputy Majority Leader, Deputy Minority Leader, Chief Whip, Minority Whip and their deputies.

Senators who spoke separately to Vanguard said the push by some South-West senators to produce the Majority Leader would create more tension in the already tensed 10th Senate, following the last election of presiding officers where the former Zamfara State governor, Senator Abdulaziz Yari, from the North-West lost to Akpabio from the South-South.

Apart from Senate President, Deputy Senate President who must go through election, the principal offices are purely the affairs of the parties, which nominate members for such positions. However, the parties have been having a tough nut to crack in this regard.

After the polls, the All Progressives Congress, APC, emerged as the majority party in the Senate with 59 Senators, the PDP has 36; Labour Party, LP, 8; New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, two senators; and Social Democratic Party, SDP, 2; while the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA and the Young Progressives Party, YPP have one senator each.
As it is, the six opposition parties have 50 senators altogether as against APC’s 59.

Since the lawmakers went on break immediately after the inauguration, there have been protests and lobbying for the position of the Majority Leader of the Senate by the senators, just as the President of the Senate, Akpabio and Barau have been engaging in series of marathon meetings, waiting for President Bola Tinubu to give the direction the process should go.

It was also gathered yesterday that some senators are angry with Akpabio, complaining that a few days after his emergence as President of the Senate, he had become inaccessible to his colleagues.

A source also said senators are angry with him, following Monday’s appointment of the Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the Senate, who are both from the South and are Christians.

Buttressing the argument, a senator from the North said that in spite of existing practice, where the Chief of Staff to the President of the Senate and the Deputy are chosen from the North and South and also reflect the two faiths- Christianity and Islam – Akpabio decided to snub the North.

The senator said: “He doesn’t seek advice. How can he appoint Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff from the South? The deputy should be from the North. He is creating problems for himself. If he had sought my advice, he would have taken his Chief of Staff from the South and Deputy from the North. It is wrong.”