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Edward T. Dibiana
From all indications, the coming June election of the Speaker of the 9th House of Representatives is unlikely to be devoid of intrigues and drama. The seeming controversial position of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) over who becomes the next Speaker, the alleged overbearing influence of some leaders of the party and the recent inflammatory utterances attributed to some APC kingpins have combined to blow the tempo of the tussle into apprehensive, feisty competition.
Whichever way the pendulum swings that day, certain things are sure. Dreams will be killed and realised. Ego will be bruised. Political battles will be won and lost. Lessons will be learnt. New heroes and villains will emerge. And Nigeria will neither sink nor evaporate!
The battle is seemingly between a section of the APC that trumpets ‘supremacy of the party’ and others with their sympathisers and collaborators across party lines who believe in the ‘independence of the legislature’ to elect its leaders without external interference.
The APC leadership believes that it has the prerogative to select the National Assembly leaders in line with the doctrine of party supremacy, so as to have a legislature that would work in tandem with the executive in order to avoid executive-legislative frictions of the past. Some lawmakers think otherwise.
In 2011, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) also travelled a similar path by endorsing Hon. Mulikat Akande Adeola as its choice for Speaker. However, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, who later emerged Speaker, ran a campaign that asserted the imperatives of legislative independence. He had argued that the integrity of the legislature would be compromised should external forces, especially the executive, be allowed to handpick the leadership of the National Assembly. And he won with the collaboration of independent-minded members of the majority PDP, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). And that, in a way, set the tone for 2015 that produced another underdog, Yakubu Dogara. Any lesson learnt?
Recent utterances of APC leaders suggest that whosever that would not support the party’s anointed candidate was free to leave the party. There is also the comment by the party’s chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, that “no other party member apart from APC should head a House committee.” These indicate that history may be of little value to the APC leaders.
Hon. Bimbo Daramola, an APC former member of the House of Representatives, and the current chief of staff to the Deputy Speaker, Yusuf Lasun (who also ran with Dogara against the will of APC leaders in 2015) had also said, “party supremacy is subject to the supremacy of the Constitution that made provision for federal character that promotes national integration, equity and justice in distribution of positions among the various geopolitical groups, inclusiveness and unity.”
The two leading contenders for the coveted position of Speaker are Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, representing Surulere Federal Constituency of Lagos State in the South West and Hon. Mohamed Umaru Bago, representing Chanchaga Federal Constituency of Niger State, North Central. Both are members of the APC with requisite cognate legislative experiences. While Gbajabiamila is a fifth-term member and the current House Leader, a position he secured after he failed to win the last speakership election in 2015, Bago, a three-term member, is the chairman, House Committee on Maritime Safety, Education and Administration.
Apparently running for the office on the dual strength of the endorsement by the APC and its leaders, especially Senator Bola Tinubu, national leader of the APC, and Oshiomhole, Gbajabiamila’s supporters and APC party hierarchy are of the view that any APC member in the House contesting against him would not only be seen as rebellion but also an anti-party conduct, which the APC would not condone. Gbajabiamila’s supporters also consider him as very experienced, astute, passionate and versed in legislative processes and procedures.
Bago, described by his supporters as experienced, level-headed, a bridge builder, urbane, accessible and a team player, hinges his aspiration on justice, equity, inclusivity as enshrined in the federal character, as well as the independence of the legislature, as provided in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He and his supporters, as well as many other House members-elect of the APC and the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), are obviously not pleased with what they see as the dictatorial tendencies of the APC leadership, which unilaterally announced Gbajabiamila as preferred candidate. They also consider such action as a violation of Section 50 of the Constitution that provides that the National Assembly members shall elect their own leaders independently among its members.
The dissenting voices who oppose the Gbajabiamila choice also query the internal democracy in the APC that encourages a “faulty reward mechanism in the party, which curiously sanctioned the zoning of both the positions of the Vice President and the Speaker of the House to the South West, while excluding the North Central that won the third highest votes for the party at the recently last elections.”
The North Central, they argued, ought to be considered for the position of the Speaker based on its electoral value, which was superior to that of South West in the last election. Niger State, where Bago hails from, got the highest vote in the region.
Speaking on the loyalty to the party and why he chose to challenge the position of his party, Bago said: “ I am going to the floor on the day of inauguration and, by the grace of God, we will come out victorious because the issue we are calling for has not been addressed, the issue of justice and equity. So, all men and women of faith have continued to encourage us to continue on this journey and we are not going to rest on our oars.
“We have our colleagues behind us and, by the grace of God, just the 360 of us are going to be in that chamber on that day to elect one of us. On issues of loyalty to the party, you know when people talk about loyalty, I keep laughing. Can there be anybody more loyal to the party than we are? We have come with General Buhari from the times of the TBO, to the CPC, to the merger that produced APC and now ‘Next Level.’ We are very loyal to the party; we are core Buharists and I have said it several times that the President, in his wisdom, told us to stand on the path of justice, fairness and equity.”
Apart from this call for equity, the fear among the members-elect is for them not to lose or “mortgage their legislative authority to the APC national leader, whose propensity for authoritarianism and the manner he runs the affairs of the party in Lagos and the South West are well known in the political circle,” according to one returning member from the region.
Intrigues are not new in House of Representatives’ elections. In fact, the last election that produced Dogara was characterised by what insiders called “political arrogance, back-stabbing, supremacy of the will of the people. And triumph of the underdog!”
According to the account given by one of the major players in the last two elections, Governor Tambuwal, as published in his interview in Vanguard of February 4, 2019, at the time he vied for the position of Speaker in 2011, he and others were taken for granted in the run-up to the election by the same party leaders who also promoted the candidature of Gbajabiamila at the time. According to him, when he visited Tinubu and complained about not being consulted, the following incidents were reported.
Tambuwal: “He said: ‘Aminu, I am sorry, I am sorry; it was an oversight.’ So, I said: ‘Okay…what do you want? You want Femi as Speaker?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said: ‘Okay, I am not opposed to it, but let me tell you, we need to pair Femi and Dogara together as Speaker and Deputy Speaker. If you want Femi, I can support Femi; he is my friend, but we have to make sure that Dogara is on the ticket as Deputy Speaker. We went back and forth, back and forth and we agreed. He said to me: Aminu, is that the deal? I said that is the deal. I will go back and talk to Dogara.’
“Meanwhile, I had called Dogara and told him of my conversation with Asiwaju and that, in the interest of peace, I want you to make the sacrifice and that, in any case, you are still growing. You cannot say Deputy Speaker is too small for you. Dogara didn’t argue with me; he said okay.
“I called Femi; I told Femi Gbajabiamila that this was my conversation with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that you are going to pair with Dogara, and he said why should I bring Dogara to become Deputy Speaker! Femi told me that!”
When later he found out that they had jettisoned the agreement by pairing Gbajabiamila and Mungono behind him, after a mock non-inclusive election was conducted by the party, Tambuwal, said: “So, when I saw it, I called Dogara and said it was like God had decided to make you the Speaker because I had done the mathematics and it is only for us to talk to four or five persons, and you will make it, and that was what happened.”
Dogara emerged Speaker. But that same attitude of not carrying other people along appears to still be the formula. Will a similar scenario play out in June? Or will the APC leaders adopt a more accommodating strategy?
•Dibiana, a journalist, writes from Abuja
