By Obi Nwakanma

On 25 February, with all the state-aided rigging, and electoral confusion, the All Progressives Congress (APC) managed to hang on to a Senate majority with 59 seats, leaving the opposition parties with a combined total of 50 seats in the 109-seat Senate. The 10th Senate will be an interesting one, when all things come to play. Very clearly, the APC does not have the kind of super majority it needs to dominate the Senate definitively. It gets even more interesting in the House of Representatives.

As a party, the APC has a very narrow majority. But as a body, the opposition parties control the votes. This makes for an interesting political chemistry, and two things will seem to me very likely, especially with the fight for the House leadership raging in the APC, which is so far dis- tributing and planning party parliamentary offices with pure conceit, and without any sense of irony or even consideration for its own fatalities. In this outgoing government, the President is from the North-West, the President of the Senate is from the North- East, and, for a brief while, the Speaker of the House was from the North-West, as was the Chief Justice.

In a very unprecedented way, the APC foisted a regional government on the federation. Later, the Speaker was appointed from the South- West, and it would seem that two regions of the federation, the South-East and the South-South, and to a certain extent, after the Senate presidency of Bukola Saraki, the North- Central, have been outside of the loop of government in the last eight years of the APC. The result has not been very pretty as all can see.

The APC, under the leadership of President Buhari, does not run an inclusive government. The great transnational energy generated by a broadly representative government, and a liberal, inclusive ideology has been lost under the APC whose political goals and affiliations seem oriented in one direction: it seems determined to close the space of what it means to be “Nigerian.” For instance, Buhari and the APC have spent political capital fighting the Igbo of the South- East, excluding them from the benefits of government; from administration, and from strategic decision-making positions, and from the nexus of political visibility. Buhari went as far as describing the Igbo people and Igbo land as a “dot” in the cartography of Nigeria.

Very clearly then, Buhari did not know the geography or even the history of Nigeria. Otherwise, he would not be so ignorant. But that’s not the point of this. The point is inclusion, or lack of it, in the sharing of Nigeria’s political largess. Here we are again: the APC is, once again, currently embroiled in a challenge of equity. Its current distribution of legislative positions in the incoming 10th Assembly which it imagines itself to control is now raising some internal heat inside the party.

The National Working Committee of the APC has allegedly zoned the presidency of the Senate to the South-South, and party sources claim that Godswill Akpabio has received the nod of the party. They zoned the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the North-West, to a guy called Abbas The South-East of Nigeria was, again, insulted with the meaningless office of the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The North-Central had nothing. The distribution of these legislative offices raised the hackles of many even within the APC, that something of a revolt brewed against the party on these questions. The APC Governor of Ondo, Mr. Akeredolu, spoke out against it forcefully, lambasting the skewering by the party of these positions that seemed unjustly to disfavor and alienate certain zones and interests in the party and in the federation.

The point though for the “Orbit” is not whether a “Southerner” or a “Northerner” or a “Middlebelter” or some such leads the Nigerian Parliament. The question is about the independence of the legislature. In the “smash and grab” politics of preferment and patronage, there are no rules, no finesse, no considerations other than hustling for power for its own sake. I speak, and in my mind is the example, of a particular politician from the South-East, whose “me-me-me” politics often never has a qualm in throwing the collective interests of the Igbo under the bus. He, it was, who argued that the Igbo were not yet ready to produce the President. Now, he is making a play for the presidency of the Senate, arguing for justice and equity for the Igbo because, now, he wants to be President of the Senate. There is not much enthusiasm for such a fellow even from the South-East.
But he is a formidable political hustler, and it is personal for him. It is not about the South-East. The people of the East have also made it known that they have only one dog in this fight: it is the presidency of Mr. Peter, and they are waiting for the courts to restore his mandate. But where that fails, the APC can stuff its party positions, continue to f-k up Nigeria, and the South-East will continue to “Siddon look.” With its incompetence and lack of capacity, the APC un- der Buhari brought Nigeria bleeding to its knees. If the courts prove to be too corrupt to render true justice, given the weight of evidence against the Tinubu presidency, and Tinu- bu becomes President, it will only take four years to complete APC’s destruction of Nigeria.

Two things will happen as a result: either the East will pull out of Nigeria because it would have become politically and economically untenable, and there will be no gas left in Nigeria’s tank to stop a much better organized secessionist movement, or Nigerians themselves will line up at the doors of the East demanding, and begging for the South- East to give them the men and women to rebuild and restore Nigeria to its old promise. But we are talking about a worst-case scenario. We do not need to get to that place yet.

The great problem – the failure of the Buhari years – was because he had very little scrutiny. The National Assembly with an APC super majority was a sham, rubber sham Assembly. It became more so when Ahman Lawan became Senate President and Femi Gbajabiamila became Speaker of the House of Representatives. They were “Yes men” to the President, and all they did was “Yessuh, Massa,” like the woebegone slave in the plantation. No legislative spine. No sense of balance. They gave Buhari carte blanche.

They did not scrutinize the executive branch. The President broke all the financial laws, and was not accountable to the National Assembly. He borrowed; entered treaties without recourse to the Senate; spent public money without approbation; and ran a government characterized by impunity. The National Assembly just gave him coverage. The Senate under Saraki held him at bay for a little while.

But from 2019, Buhari un- leashed his agenda, and Nigerians can measure the full implications, today, of a National Assembly, tied to the small fingers of a ruthless but incompetent President. The current moves inside the APC is an attempt to reproduce that same basis of control. Bola Tinubu is attempting, should the courts return him as President, to select his own “Yes men.” But that should not be. The current cartography of the National Assembly does not accord with this ambition. The APC can be upstaged in the National Assembly.