Senator representing Delta State (Central), Ovie Omo-Agege, has said President Muhammadu Buhari would be actively involved in the process of selecting the next leadership of the Senate.
Senator Omo-Agege, who disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Warri, yesterday, said the president and the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) would avoid the 2015 mistake that led to the emergence of Dr. Bukola Saraki as senate president.
“Anybody who is going to be Senate president, in the ninth Senate must be somebody who is loyal to Mr. President, the party and the constitution.
‘‘The Senate president will be determined by Mr. President. Mr President will indicate to us through the party who he want to work with,’’ he said.
The ruling APC is set to produce the next Senate president after winning the majority of senatorial seats in the February 23 election.
Asked if APC has zoned the plum office to any geo-political zone, he replied: ‘‘I do not know. But what I can tell you is that we are going to have a Senate that will work with Mr. President.
‘‘The era of allowing renegades who rode on the back of Mr. President, who rode on the back of the party to go in there and trade the party’s mandate, I think that era is gone.
‘‘I am very hopeful that this time around, Mr. President will step in and decide not only the zone that will produce the Senate president and the leadership but also who should be.
‘‘We don’t want to elect another opposition leader in the Senate, as we had in the eighth Assembly.
‘‘There are a lot of us in the Senate who are returning to the next senate who fits into that position. We are so many but any decision the president makes, we will all fall in line and abide.
‘‘We want President Buhari to succeed and it is all in our place, some of us who are close to him, to tell him certain calls he should not make because we know ourselves in the National Assembly and we do not want a repeat of the Saraki saga as we go back to the ninth Senate,’’ he said.