Over the last week, the senate has been involved in a bitter dispute about who will be its principal officers, with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) involved in repeated clashes with senate president Bukola Saraki. This morning, however, the matter was resolved as apart from electing the leader and deputy, Senator Olusola Adeyeye of Osun State was elected chief whip and Senator Francis Makhana as deputy chief whip.
This brings to an end, bitter wrangling over the last two days that has split the APC into two opposing camps. On Monday, senators met at the residence of the party’s national chairman, Chief John Oyegun failed as the warring but many of them refused to shift grounds on how the other principal officers in the Senate should be selected.
APC senators were divided into two camps, with one group calling itself Like Minds, loyal to the senate president Bukola Saraki, while the other camp, known as the Unity Forum, is led by Senator Ahmed Lawan, who lost the senate presidency seat to Senator Saraki. While Senator Lawan’s group with the support of some APC leaders wanted the party to choose the occupants of the positions, the Saraki camp maintained that the principal officers must be produced by the various zonal caucuses in the Senate.
So bitter has the dispute been that earlier this week, members of the National Assembly exchanged blows as it descended into physical combat. With the matter now resolved, however, the APC hopes that peace will return to the party.
Senator Ndume was once questioned amid rumours that he had links with Boko Haram, after the Nigerian State Security Service's interrogation of a suspected Boko Haram member and spokesman, Mallam Ali Konduga. Part of a committee set up by President Goodluck Jonathan to dialogue with the terrorists, Senator Ndume had said that the violence would continue until the group felt they had been heard and saw that the problems of poverty and unemployment were being addressed.
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