One thing that anyone would easily recall about the life and times of the late Chief Joseph Wayas is that he was Nigeria’s Senate President and number three citizen upon the return to civilian rule in 1979. He would be easily remembered as a gentleman politician who was never carried away by the high office he occupied.

So many things would have disqualified him from being the Second Republic Senate President. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not have the privilege of a university education. He left for the United Kingdom after his secondary education at Dennis Memorial Grammar School, At the United Kingdom; it is instructive that he attended Colleges such as Higher Tottenham Technical College, Southampton College of Commerce and Aston Villa College. At best, that was modest and could have precluded him from holding very high offices at the federal level where competition for such positions is very keen. Wayas broke the moulds.

The journey to the top started when he was appointed the South Eastern State Commissioner for Transport in 1972. He served in that capacity for two years and moved on to participate in the 1977/78 Constituent Assembly where he met and rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers of the country who later formed the National Party of Nigeria. The nursery for that political party that later ran the affairs of the nation in the Second Republic was the National Movement formed at the Constituent Assembly.

It might never be known why and how the “men of timber and calibre, juggernaut and caterpillar” of the Second Republic as the late Dr. Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe referred to them settled for Wayas as Senate President. He had no legislative experience and never occupied a high-profile political office before that opportunity came. To be elected to the Senate, he had to defeat a far more experienced politician, Chief Matthew Two Mbu, who had first been noticed on the political radar when he was appointed a minister at the age of 24. At the inaugural meeting of the Senate, he was pitched against Justice Franklin Atake, a former Chief Judge of Bendel State who was put forward by the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). Of course, Wayas who enjoyed the support of his party, the NPN, and the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP), sailed into the office. It might be interesting to note that the NPN then controlled 36 of the 95 seats in the Senate while the NPP had 16 Senators. The UPN had 28, while Waziri Ibrahim’s Great Nigeria Peoples Party (GNPP) and Aminu Kano’s Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) were represented in the chamber by 15 Senators.

To Joseph Wayas’s credit, he was able to manage the star-studded Senate throughout the Second Republic such that his party re-presented him for a second term that he easily won being backed by a resounding victory that the NPN had somehow recorded, even if it turned out to be pyrrhic victory that ultimately consumed the Republic. On the shoulder of 38-year-old Wayas with little political experience was laid the responsibility of stabilising that Republic. He discharged that duty creditably. The Senate had such prominent personalities as Chief Jaja Nwachukwu, Jonathan Odebiyi, Abraham Adesanya, Nathaniel Anah, Offia-Nwali, Alhaji Uba Ahmed, Ayo Fasanmi, Banji Akintoye Franklin Ateke, among others. How he managed the House, especially when his party did not enjoy even a simple majority and the accord with NPP broke down early is something that political scientists may yet have to study. He ensured that the executive had little problem getting legislative backing for its policies, programmes and Bills. He equally managed to ensure that the opposition caucus had confidence in his leadership all through.

When the military struck in December 1983, Wayas managed to sneak through the country’s borders and found his way back to the United Kingdom until 1987 when he resurfaced. Although detained for two years, little was heard of him thereafter. He receded from high-profile political participation to the background such that attempts to leap into prominence once again through the All Peoples Party (APP) and later the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) failed.

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