Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari and governors elected on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC) as well as senators-elect of the party have agreed on a consensus candidate for the position of the Senate President.
This is to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2015 when the opposition party determined who emerged as the Senate president.
The National Chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, disclosed this at the end of the meeting with APC National Working Committee members, returning and newly- elected Senators at the Presidential Villa, on Monday, presided over by President Buhari.
Speaking to State House correspondents, Adams Oshiomhole said: “We had the first meeting with the president who is also the leader of the party and also with serving senators, newly-elected senators and ranking senators. The purpose of this was to bond the new and old members, to establish a new of relationship between the executive and the legislature.
The system talks about the separation of powers between the executive and legislature but the two must shake hands for things to happen. And when you have a president that is determined to drive changes, fundamental changes that will affect our habits, our life style, review the economy, deal with the security situation, fight corruption as fiercely as he is trying to do, he will need a very supportive legislative arm of government. And happily, the Nigerian people have given us the number in the legislative arm of government; all we have agreed today is that we will use these numbers as a functioning whole to determine the leadership of the Senate in a way that we are not going to go to the floor of the Senate and allow the opposition dictate who becomes the Senate president. Because, we have a comfortable majority to drive that; what we have to do is to manage that majority.
“We have discussed those specifics and because these are businesses that have to do with elections, as a caucus, this is more or less a meeting of the incoming caucus to discuss leadership question and to build a consensus around an individual so that people don’t have to go trading, generating heat in a way that can weaken internal solidarity in the party.
“Of course, we are aware that the opposition is expecting that the APC senators are going to fight themselves, the House of Reps are going to fight themselves and then they will take advantage and pick who they will support. They will be disappointed because our senators are seasoned senators; we have a cream of ranking senators that are in their own right capable of providing leadership of the Senate. So, what we have to do is to weave all these together and arrive at a consensus of who leads and everybody follows. So, we will have this time, a more cohesive National Assembly and I think it went extremely well.”
Also commenting, governor of Zamfara State, Abdulaziz Yari, said: “We took a step back to 2015 and reviewed what happened in the Senate and House of Representatives. Now, we want to go as one APC family notwithstanding our brothers from the other party. We are now talking about Nigeria first. The president requested that we all work for the betterment of Nigeria.
“As regards the leadership, the president requested that we work hand in hand to ensure that we come out as one family so that what belongs to the majority goes to majority and what belongs to minority goes to minority.
“We assured him of full cooperation to ensure we revamp the economy, tackle insecurity and fight corruption. We assured him that the Ninth Assembly will work in harmony with the executive arm.”
Simon Lalong of Plateau said: “What the president has done today, I think is the right step in the right direction. The last time we did not have the opportunity of this politics but today, Mr. President invited us. Because, we are governors and we also dialogue with our senators.
“Mr. President said in order to avoid rancour, let me lay the way forward and we are very happy he has laid the way forward and because of that, we are all going to work towards achieving the desire of Mr. President for the good of this country.”
As things stand, four ranking members of the Senate have openly shown interests in contesting for the position of the Senate President.
They include the incumbent Senate Leader, Ahmed Lawan, former governor of Gombe State, Sen. Danjuma Goje, Senator Ali Ndume and former governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu.