Now that the elections to the Senate and House of Representatives leadership have come and gone, here are some things we can say have been learnt:
1. Buhari may be a good leader, but he is a terrible politician: This goes without saying; playing completely neutral in who becomes the senate president when your party is in the majority? In a country like Nigeria? That is gross political ignorance. Two key tactics that make a great politician are the ability to lobby, and the ability to intervene. How is it possible that while everyone was lobbying for a preferred candidate, he chose not to intervene? That smacks of political naivety. One need not go too far to see how previous presidents were overtly lobbying for their preferred candidates for legislative leadership positions. We can only hope that his nonindulgence will not come back to haunt his presidency. (Although something tells me he had a hand in the emergence of the SP and the Speaker. Take that with a tablespoon of salt though)
2. Everyone is a winner (Except Tinubu): Yes there are winners everywhere (Except Ndume, Gbajabiamila and Monguno of course). The APC unwittingly won an internal battle against the outrageously influential Tinubu, and can boast of being a party without (conspicuous) godfatherism.
PDP are even bigger winners than APC; this is the first time a member of a minority party will be made a principal officer in the senate (excluding minority and deputy minority leaders) in Ekweremadu. This also shows that PDP's 16 years in power taught them a lot about hardcore politics. All they had to do was cash in on the crisis in APC, which they so deliciously did, and now they can boast of being influential in the scheme of things (at least it seems so on the surface). (Make no mistake, had APC supported Saraki, PDP would so easily have backed Lawan, and the rest would have been history).
But the biggest winner in all these has to be Senator Bukola Saraki. Knowing how to lobby the right people for his personal ambition (I'm not saying it's a good thing). He has just shown how smart a politician he can be, and his overzealous ambition might actually take him places - I won't be shocked to see him running for the number 1 office come 2023, or even 2019 (Watch this space).
3. Politicians will always be politicians, and Dino Melaye is no exception: One would have expected that after all that the PDP did to this man to terminate his political career, and the respite and platform the APC gave to him, he would at least be somewhat loyal to his party. Well, that's something honest people do, and politicians are not honest. So after vilifying the PDP at any given opportunity, the first thing he did as a senator was to defy the APC (that rebounded his political career), and align with the same PDP (you would think he loves to hate) just to get in his candidate as the senate president. That speaks volumes of a man's character. I tend to find solace in this quote though "Leave politics for politicians and governance for technocrats" - PMB 2015, because politicians will always be cunning, deceitful, dishonest, unscrupulous, insincere, crafty, mendacious and Machiavellian; but that is what makes them politicians
1. Buhari may be a good leader, but he is a terrible politician: This goes without saying; playing completely neutral in who becomes the senate president when your party is in the majority? In a country like Nigeria? That is gross political ignorance. Two key tactics that make a great politician are the ability to lobby, and the ability to intervene. How is it possible that while everyone was lobbying for a preferred candidate, he chose not to intervene? That smacks of political naivety. One need not go too far to see how previous presidents were overtly lobbying for their preferred candidates for legislative leadership positions. We can only hope that his nonindulgence will not come back to haunt his presidency. (Although something tells me he had a hand in the emergence of the SP and the Speaker. Take that with a tablespoon of salt though)
2. Everyone is a winner (Except Tinubu): Yes there are winners everywhere (Except Ndume, Gbajabiamila and Monguno of course). The APC unwittingly won an internal battle against the outrageously influential Tinubu, and can boast of being a party without (conspicuous) godfatherism.
PDP are even bigger winners than APC; this is the first time a member of a minority party will be made a principal officer in the senate (excluding minority and deputy minority leaders) in Ekweremadu. This also shows that PDP's 16 years in power taught them a lot about hardcore politics. All they had to do was cash in on the crisis in APC, which they so deliciously did, and now they can boast of being influential in the scheme of things (at least it seems so on the surface). (Make no mistake, had APC supported Saraki, PDP would so easily have backed Lawan, and the rest would have been history).
But the biggest winner in all these has to be Senator Bukola Saraki. Knowing how to lobby the right people for his personal ambition (I'm not saying it's a good thing). He has just shown how smart a politician he can be, and his overzealous ambition might actually take him places - I won't be shocked to see him running for the number 1 office come 2023, or even 2019 (Watch this space).
3. Politicians will always be politicians, and Dino Melaye is no exception: One would have expected that after all that the PDP did to this man to terminate his political career, and the respite and platform the APC gave to him, he would at least be somewhat loyal to his party. Well, that's something honest people do, and politicians are not honest. So after vilifying the PDP at any given opportunity, the first thing he did as a senator was to defy the APC (that rebounded his political career), and align with the same PDP (you would think he loves to hate) just to get in his candidate as the senate president. That speaks volumes of a man's character. I tend to find solace in this quote though "Leave politics for politicians and governance for technocrats" - PMB 2015, because politicians will always be cunning, deceitful, dishonest, unscrupulous, insincere, crafty, mendacious and Machiavellian; but that is what makes them politicians
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