Date: 2015-06-21

Since the election of Senator Bukola Saraki as the president of the Senate on June 9, there has been a subtle but noticeable effort in an angle of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to carve a subterfuge role for Saraki’s predecessor, Senator David Mark, in the dramatic poll between Saraki and Senator Ahmed Lawan.

Ordinarily, such innuendoes and half-truths would have been left in the realms of half-literate and back-street urchins but where respectable men and women begin to buy into such fabricated lines as ecclesial truth, it becomes mandatory to revisit the events that characterized the election.

The immediate pre-occupation of the past president of the Senate, Senator David Mark, before June 8 was to provide a leadership for senators-elect on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to enable the party present a credible  opposition to the APC.

Senator Mark held series of meetings with PDP stakeholders as well as senators-elect on the platform of his party with a view to achieving a consensual approach to his party’s position. He did likewise for House of Representatives members-elect of the PDP stock. He desired and worked to ensure that PDP senators as well as members-elect were united in their choice of presiding officers.

It is also imperative to state that Saraki and Lawan as well as their respective promoters, expectedly, sought the support of the PDP senators-elect and also importantly the support of Senator Mark.

On the night of June 8, a meeting was held at the residence of Mark. Present were the governors elected on the platform of the party, a handful members of the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) and the senators-elect. The agenda of that meeting was to decide the course that the caucus would thread.

As the meeting progressed, no fewer than three grounds were formulated - to nominate candidates for Senate president and the deputy Senate president; to support APC for president of the Senate with a PDP-member as deputy Senate president and to turn down the two major contenders - Saraki and Lawan - and support another candidate.

The first proposal crashed as Senator Mark made it clear that he will not join the race for Senate president. The third also collapsed as the timing was considered inexpedient. The meeting was left with the second suggestion - supporting APC to produce Senate president with a PDP senator as his deputy.

There was then the need to choose between Saraki and Lawan since the immediate past deputy Senate president, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, did not decline to be deputy Senate president.

Both Mark and Ekweremadu, however, opted not to cast a vote in the mock election. When the lot was cast, Saraki garnered 28 while Lawan won 17 votes. The meeting then resolved to support the candidate with a majority vote, Saraki, and Ekweremadu will run as his deputy.

It is important to stress that decisions like these are never cast in iron. Sometimes, they could be re-defined by political expediency.

When the meeting closed, it was already 3am and the Senate inauguration was scheduled for 10am by a proclamation issued and signed by President Muhammadu Buhari and presented to the Clerk of the National Assembly (CNA) Alhaji Maikasuwa.

President Buhari’s proclamation was not addressed to Mark as he (Mark) had ceased to be the presiding officer of the Senate since the previous week. He was on the floor of the Senate like every other senator-elect to cast his vote for a new president of the Senate and take his turn for oaths. It is therefore ludicrous for any of the clans of APC to accuse the two-term president of the Senate of manipulation of the electoral process that gave Saraki a unanimous victory.

Rather, what has confounded every parliamentary politics watcher is how Senator Lawan, with his mastery of parliamentary practice and procedure, could be easily snookered through a yet-to-be confirmed scheduled meeting with Buhari.

Did it not occur to Lawan and his handlers that a presidential proclamation, which is a public or official announcement of an important matter, cannot be reversed through mere text messages to APC senators-elect only, in a chamber populated by the two major parties?

Senator Mark cannot be crucified for the failings of the APC apparatchiks. His action in the horse-trading leading to the election of the presiding officer for the Senate on June 9 was honest, noble and sincere. Above all, Mark deserves to be commended for his statesmanship in rejecting the ploy to drag him to contest for the office of the Senate president when it became obvious that majority of the APC senators-elect were absent from the floor.

Ologbondiyan, a parliamentary news reporter and political editor, served as special adviser (media and publicity) to the immediate past president of the Senate, Senator David A.B Mark