National Assmbly: A Recipe For National Instability By Bolaji Aluko

Notice that I am not writing "APC" or "PDP", or "Saraki" or "Ekwerenmadu". I could care less those labels. I am writing about "Majority Party" and "Minority Party" and "Senate President" and "Deputy President", so as to remove EMOTIONS and LOYALTIES that blind us Nigerians from principled stands. I have also written about "Quorums" and "Absences" and "First Meetings."

In the "First Meeting" - the Inaugural Meeting - of the Senate of the 8th Senate of Nigeria, it was ABSOLUTELY WRONG, IMMORAL and UNETHICAL not to wait until ALL THE SENATORS were available, when you knew that they were just 15 minutes down the road - FOR WHATEVER REASON. When I write about LAWFUL vs. EXPEDIENT, that is what I mean.

Listen: if the Clerk, entering that Senate Chamber, saw it ONLY HALF-FULL, national interest dictates that he ASKS publicly where they are - even if he knew EXACTLY where they were. He could have telegraphed - if he wanted to play hardball - that if they did not come in within two hours, he would proceed with the Inaugural meeting - and they would have come running...


Unless there was a conspiracy to take advantage of their absence, and do "hurry up offence......


I have asked: if ONLY the Minority Party members (49 of them) quorum (requiring only 37) had been the ONLY ones in that Chamber on June 9, would it have been APPROPRIATE for the Clerk to go ahead with that Inaugural meeting, and possibly ensure the emergence of BOTH the President and Deputy President as being from that Minority Party? If the answer is NO, then why does the addition of five MAJORITY members (out of 60) added to those Minority Party members make a difference? If that is YES, then that is ridiculous, and is a recipe for legislative instability.


The other question has to do with the emergence of a Minority Deputy to a Majority President in the presence of a quorum-ful Minority Party. So one day, with the Minority Deputy presiding in the absence of the Majority President, he can engineer only his party - in a properly called meeting - to be the only ones in the Senate - and they will DISSOLVE the Presidency

That is a recipe for national instability......


Notice that PMB has "congratulated" the Senate President and pointedly avoided saying anything about the Deputy President. I am sure that he is now counting his worry beads, and asking who he really belongs to. President Buhari has to RE-ASSERT control over the party, and limit the damage already done. It is a bad start, but not a fatal one. Nothing wrong with individual ambition, but it must be within party principles....certainly not in a manner that allows the other party to - rightly or wrongly - to take advantage.


And there you have it,

By:



Bolaji Aluko