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JUNE 18, 2007 VOL. 21, NO. 10

Deal of the Godfathers

**Ahmadu Ali, PDP Chairman**

Last week’s emergence of new leaders for the National Assembly follows the familiar pattern of politics of godfatherism
By Tony Egbulefu, Abuja
THE National Assembly complex, which provides offices for national legislators and the legislative chambers of both the upper and lower legislature Houses, was last week the busiest in the “Three Arms Zone” that consist of the Presidency, the Judiciary and the Legislature. The hustling and bustling that turbo-charged the hallowed complex and its perimeters, drew from inauguration of the sixth session of the Nigerian Legislature on Tuesday, June 5.
In fact, since three weeks ago, choice hotels in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja had played host to a good number of the lawmakers, numbering 550 – 360 and 109 – for the House of Representatives and the Senate respectively, most of whom had been engaged in horsetrading and the politics of the emergence of the new principal officers of the two legislative Houses, and documentation of their particulars and identification.
As at last Monday, only a few hours to the inauguration of the Assembly by the President, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the tempo of the documentation and identification activities from both the national legislators and officers of the National Assembly was on the upbeat. It was billed to be a glorious occasion and all the legislators wanted to be part of it. But aside the solemnity and decorum that attended the event was a huge dose of cloak-and- dagger politics that shaped the emergence of the principal officers of the two Houses at the end of the day.
As it were, the race to replace Senator Ken Nnamani and Bello Masari, Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives and the other principal officers of the Nigeria legislature took off at full steam soon after the results of the April 21 presidential and National Assembly elections were made public. With the President and his deputy having emerged from the North west and South south respectively, the remaining geo-political zones: South west, South east, North central and North east, engaged one another in an intense lobby to produce the leadership of the legistature. However, while stronger heat came from the South west, North central and North east, for the slot of the Senate Presidency, the South east, where the position has been domiciled for the past eight years, made only a half-hearted go at the position. The South east as the indications show, was this time more enamoured with the Speakership of the House of Representatives.
A position akin to that of the South east, also proved a wet blanket on the South west. In the past eight years, the zone has had the rare privilege of producing the President, a position that confers the first citizenship and number one position in the country. As such, suing fiercely for the senate presidency, a position that confers the number three position, would cast the South west as asking for too much, too soon. The zone, thus, was more spirited in its quest for the fourth position – the speakership. Its strongest argument though for the Senate Presidency was that the zone has not occupied the Nigerian Senate Presidency since independence in 1960. The North east was also not fierce in its lobby for the Senate presidency and this was because the zone found itself almost in the same shoes with the South west. The zone over the last eight years has held Nigeria’s number two position – the Vice Presidency – in the person of Atiku Abubakar who hails from Adamawa State. Thus, the equation and the political chess game for power among the zones within the Executive and the Legislature hugely favoured the North central, which played only a second-fiddle role in the leadership of the senate with the slot of deputy Senate President, in the past eight years. What appeared to be a compensation to the zone was the slot of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) national chairmanship under the last dispensation.
This status quo ante formed the backdrop that apparently influenced the PDP’s decision to swing the Senate Presidency slot to the North central. And after several deadlocked meetings of the leadership of the ruling party, under the then Obasanjo government, the party farmed out the rest of the National Assembly leadership slots.
In the sharing arrangement, the South east got the deputy Senate President, Senate Majority Leader went to the South west, Senate Chief Whip of the PDP, North west, Senate deputy chief whip of the PDP, North east and deputy majority leader, South south.
In the House of Representatives, the South west got the Speakership, deputy Speaker, North east, Majority Leader, South south, Chief Whip of the PDP, South east, deputy Majority Leader, North west, leaving the North central for the deputy chief whip of the PDP slot.
Two major factors outside the positions the South east, South west and North east held in the Obasanjo government influenced what these three zones got in President Yar’Adua government. These are the appointment of Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe from Borno, North east by President Yar’Adua as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and former President Obasanjo’s intent on becoming the next PDP’s Board of Trustees chairman. Kingibe’s position, which is critical within the ambit of the executive, left the North east with the fringe positions of the PDP Senate Chief Whip and deputy Speaker, while Obasanjo’s imminent position as the PDP’s Board of Trustees chairman, ensured that the national chairman of the ruling party would have to come from outside his South west. Consequently, the party’s chairmanship has to be shifted to the South east to enable the former influential president grab the much coveted BOT chairmanship. This permutation to accommodate Obasanjo on the power grid of the PDP effectively robbed the South east of the Speakership and left it in the kitty of the South west.
Though the decision to feed the desire of Obasanjo to function as the PDP BOT chairman came to be with the zoning of the party’s chairmanship to the South east, it came as an after-thought and grudge decision. After a protracted lobbying by political and opinion leaders of both the South east and the South west for the position of the speakership, the position mid- week, three weeks ago, was allotted to the South east by the PDP leadership, which subscribed to the South east argument that as an important leg of the Nigerian tripod, which has watched the swing of the presidency between the other major ethnic blocs, the Yorubas of the South west and the Hausas of the North in the past eight years, it was only fair and compelling that the Igbos of the South east be given a chance to at least play a principal role in the next four years, rather than be consigned to the fringes of central governance, moreso when the vice presidency has also swung from the North to the South south minority.
The decision to appease the Igbos with the Speakership only stuck till weekend, last three weeks ago. Over that weekend, at a meeting held in Aso Rock that drew Obasanjo then as president, Yar’Adua and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as president and vice-president-elect respectively, Ahmadu Ali and Ojo Maduekwe, PDP’s national chairman and secretary respectively, all the zonal national vice chairmen of the PDP and Tony Anenih, PDP’s BOT chairman, the decision to zone the speakership to the South east was upturned. The South west was favoured to grab the position, in a swap that saw the South east being given the deputy senate president that was originally reserved for the South west. And because the BOT chairmanship and that of the national chairman of the PDP cannot be domiciled in one zone, the former was additionally given to the South east, whereas the South west grabbed the BOT chairmanship through a last year constitutional amendment in the party that favoured Obasanjo for the position is a fait accompli.
Penultimate Monday, the PDP leadership followed up with a meeting with old national legislators and the new ones on the PDP platform at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, where Ali reeled out the names of those the party had chosen to be their leaders in the National Assembly. At the meeting, Senator Joy Emordi (Anambra North) gave a loud vent to the South east leaders and national legislators let down by the PDP in denying the zone the speaker’s slot.
Ali had stated that David Mark, representing Benue South had been chosen by the party as the new Senate president, Ike Ekweremadu, Enugu West, deputy Senate President, Teslim Folarin, Senate Majority Leader, Kanti Bello, PDP Chief Whip and Victor Ndoma-Egba, deputy Senate Leader.
For the House of Representatives, he announced that Patricia Olubunmi Etteh (Osun State), had been chosen by the party as the Speaker, Babangida Nguroje (Taraba), as deputy speaker, Colonel Tunde Akogun, House Leader and Bethel Amadi, Chief Whip.
When Ali was done, he gave the PDP national legislators the privilege of raising objections against the party’s nominees, but strangely everybody concurred with the decision of the party on the choice of the National Assembly leaders. And to formalise the divisions within the party on its choice of new National Assembly leaders, nominations were sought from the national legislators by the PDP chairman.
Lee Maeba, from Rivers State was asked by Ali to nominate Senator Mark. He did and was seconded by Senator Iyiola Omisore (Osun State), but Emordi shocked the PDP national chairman when she turned down Ali’s request to nominate Ekweremadu for the posisiton of the deputy senate president. In refusing to oblige Ali, she pledged her abiding loyalty to the party, but said that the slot was demeaning on a major ethnic bloc such as the South east. However outside the meeting venue, she congratulated Senator Ekweremadu for the honour the party had done to him.
Though a Senator, Ekweremadu in the heat of the politics of the zoning arrangement had also variously canvassed that nothing less than the speakership was good enough for the South east in the current order. Besides party supremacy, former President Obasanjo and perhaps religion played the decisive roles in determining the people that would lead the present National Assembly. President Yar’Adua as it were, showed non-challance in who emerges leader in both legislative Houses. Unlike what it was in the days of President Obasanjo, he sent a clear signal that he was ready and willing to work with whoever emerges as leader in any of the national legislative houses. The choice of Senator Mark over Abubakar Sodangi (Nasarawa), Nuhu Aliyu (Niger) and Gbemisola Saraki (Kwara) was elaborately that of former President Obasanjo. Notedly, Mark is an absolute loyalist of the former president, a credential he shared with Sodangi. But the former president favours Mark for his strong personality, reputation as a skinflint and steadfast loyalty that takes root in his military background. The last reason, more than anything else, perhaps earned him the edge from Obasanjo over an equally fiercely loyal Sodangi. Obasanjo reasoned that it would pay Yar’Adua better to bank on a military kind of loyalty. Again, the anointment of Mark is to reward the Oturkpo-born former military officer for his unflinching loyalty to him in the past eight years.
The loyalty Obasanjo found in Mark, he also found in all other selected principal officers of the Senate including Ekweremadu, the deputy senate president, whom his immediate past state governor and benefactor, Governor Chimaroke Nnamani, infected with loyalty to the former president.
But inspite of their loyalty to Obasanjo, Sodangi, Aliyu and Saraki stepped down for George Akume, the immediate past State governor and Mark local rival in Benue politics who threw his hat into the ring against Mark. The Akume challenge to Mark was significant in many ways. One, it reinforced the battle of former Vice President Atiku loyalists against the interest of Obasanjo. Also, the support he got from former President Ibrahim Babangida bore eloquent testimony to the war of nerves between Babangida and his friend and confidant, Obasanjo. Again, the pool of support he got from his former governor-colleagues now in the senate, showed that the senators from Government Houses may not only work as a coterie but also may have used the Akume challenge to test the strength of their influence on their colleagues, especially those of them that were elected from the same state with them. Ahmed Makarfi, Sani Yerima and Adamu Aliero, former governors of Kaduna, Zamfara and Kebbi States, collectively pulled strings for Akume. At the end of the voting exercise, however, Mark trounced Akume by 69 votes to 38 to emerge the new senate president.
A surprise support for Mark among the former contestants, came from Aliyu, who carved a niche for himself for standing variously against the many drives and devices of Obasanjo in the senate.
Like in the Senate, former President Obasanjo also put his foot down on the Etteh Speakership, before he left office on May 29. Etteh was a loyalist of the former president and then PDP, even while she was in the House from 1999 to 2003 on the platform of the rival Alliance for Democracy (AD) and operated as the party’s chief whip. Her pandering to the former president and his party, often put her on the warpath with other AD members of the House. She barely tolerated the AD till 2003, when she defected to the PDP.
Two weeks ago, an official of the PDP told The Source that the party was irrevocably determined to ensure that a woman (Etteh) emerged the Speaker of the house of Representatives to underscore the gender-friendliness of the party and its commitment to giving all its members equal opportunity and an even playing ground. Etteh, a beautician, emerged as the new Speaker when the joke in the House was that it won’t be possible for the Honourable members to dispense with the services of a “plumber” (Masari) and engage that of a hair-dresser (Etteh). This joke was an allusion to the alleged limited educational background of Etteh and Masari, her predecessor. But The Source’s finding indicate that besides having a Diploma in Law, Etteh has just rounded off a Bachelor’s degree at the Universtiy of Abuja. Notably, she also emerged against a huge resentment from northern Muslim members of the House of Representatives, who argued that a woman’s headship of men was anti-Islamic, ungodly and violates the law of nature.
How did this woman ride these storms and emerge effortlessly in a race that once boasted the likes of Dr. Alaba Ojomo (Ondo), Wale Oke (Osun), Kayode Amusan (Osun), and Dimeji Bankole (Oyo) and from the South east, that once feature Ogbuefi Ozomgbachi (Enugu), Emeka Ihedioha (Imo), Independence Ogunewe (Imo), Bethel Amadi (Imo) and Chuma Nzeribe (Anambra).
Etteh finally emerged unchallenged. Her emergence and that of all other principal officers of the senate and the House of Representatives took all their roots on the fear of the PDP birch and the unwritten code of conduct by all members to kow-tow to Baba.
Being Christians may also have placed Mark and Etteh on the winner-tracks in the race for the leadership of the National Assembly. Indeed, though an all-Christian leadership of both legislative Houses was advanced in some quarters as running foul of Nigeria’s religious sensitivity, especially at the commanding height of governance, it curiously proved a strong point in the Mark and Etteh emergence.
If Muslims could lead the executive and the judiciary, Christians, it was argued, could also lead the legislature.