Few days to the resumption of the 10th Senate, northern senators elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have intensified protests and lobbying for the position of majority leader.

Some senators who spoke to newsmen in confidence, said the push by some South West lawmakers to fill the position would cause further disaffection in the already polarised Red Chamber.

One of the lawmakers said a precedent had also been set where the campaign coordinator of the Senate president is often named as majority leader. He wondered why the dynamics should be changed and a senator with lesser cognitive experience picked.

He called on the National Working Committee (NWC) of APC to address the imbalance in the Senate, where members from the North were already feeling marginalised.

He said: “Now, I learnt that they are pushing for Opeyemi Bamidele for Senate leader. Bamidele is a junior senator who can’t hold the Red Chamber together during any crisis. We know the director of Akpabio’s campaign and Bamidele was the deputy.

“When Ahmad Lawan campaigned and got the Senate president, it was the director general of his campaign organisation, Abdullahi Yahaya, that became the Senate leader. When Ndume was campaign director for Saraki, he became Senate leader. When Ndoma Egba was made campaign coordinator for David Mark, it was insisted that he should be the Senate leader.

“Now, they say they want to make the deputy campaign coordinator the Senate leader. Even himself should not have started all these. It does not arise. So, the only reason they are pushing him for the Senate leadership position is because he is Yoruba. And they forgot that it was this same reason that made us to stand for Akpabio.

“If not for some of us, Akpabio would have lost. Even despite the fight that we put on, we escaped with how many votes? Only 17 and Yari needed only nine votes to win. He got 46 already. And you know that at least there were more than 20 people that were in that Akpabio’s camp because of some of us and not because of Akpabio. These are facts. Bamidele has never been in the leadership. Ndume was a minority leader. He was a Senate leader. He led the campaign for Akpabio and he’s older than Bamidele in the National Assembly.”

Meanwhile, Akpabio has come under fire following Monday’s appointment of chief of staff and his deputy to the Senate president, who are both from the South and are Christians.

Senators, who are angry over the move, said Akpabio, barely a few days after his emergence, has become inaccessible to his colleagues.

A lawmaker said despite the existing practice where the chief of staff to the Senate president and the deputy are chosen from the North and South and also reflect the two faiths – Christianity and Islam, Akpabio decided to snub the North.

“That is why he doesn’t seek advice. How can he appoint chief of staff and deputy all from the South? The deputy should be from the North. He is creating problems for himself. If he had sought my advice, he would have taken his chief of staff from the South and deputy from the North. It is wrong,” an aggrieved northern senator noted. (Daily Sun)

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