“It is my conviction that the Nigerian political space should have been spared the type of pollution that occurred in the Senate chamber on Tuesday 9th June 2015.
“First let me look at the process. In the Green Chamber, Gbajabiamila, a well respected and popular contestant for speakership and indeed the preferred candidate of his party, the APC, lost. He lost by eight votes. Pity, but the fact remains that he lost by a democratic process.
“Graciously he rose from his seat, embraced and congratulated the man who had defeated him and that immediately put the elected speaker at ease. That can only help to deepen democracy.
More than that, Gbajabiamila demonstrated that his ambition was not just to occupy an office, so he turned down, without hesitation, the offer to take the position of deputy.
He gained my respect and admiration and I dare say that gesture has surely put the entire House at ease in much the same way as former President Jonathan’s decision to concede victory to President Buhari helped to put Nigeria at
ease.“In the Red Chamber, the Senate, the story was quite different. The President, a newly elected President had called members of his party to a meeting ahead of the convocation. Some members of his party and the Clerk
of the Senate took advantage of that to enact what can only be described as an unfortunate return to garrison politics. How sad! How very sad!“Forget what the party had done, I will come to that, but this is a President that had said, with all honesty, that he had no favorite. Who knows if what the President intended to tell his party members at the meeting that was so rudely snubbed was not to say that they should vote
their conscience. After all the National Assembly which is composed of several parties is to serve the nation and not only one party.“With APC having 59 members and the PDP 49, and given the fact that both Saraki and Lawan – the preferred candidate, are of the same party, any one of them could have won and the victory would have been glorious if it had been as a result of proper democratic process rather than brinkmanship.
“However let us look at the consequence of the leadership split – Senate President, APC; Deputy Senate President, PDP. Deployed positively this is bound to be good for the country provided the PDP does not take advantage
of its position to play the dog in the manger.The President must be not hamstrung in his desire for change which we all voted for, but by the same token every legislation will now need support from both sides to sail
through. We can learn lessons from President Obama’s Medicare bill.“The issue of party supremacy is a different matter. It must not be forgotten that the elected members constitute the constituency for the election of their leaders.
Unfortunately, ruling parties tend always to treat such elections as party matter which in fact they are not. That is
why I referred to both Gbajabiamila and Lawan as preferred candidates – preferred by their party APC but the final choice must be that of the elected members to make.“Party supremacy unfortunately has often been used as a weapon for, and a thin veil to dress up the undemocratic phenomen of imposition. Indeed democracy has had a new birth, let us nurture it to maturity.”