Senate presidency: Gale of endorsements for Lawan

If the ongoing gale of en­dorsements is anything to go by, the Eighth Senate may have al­ready chosen its next president.
Daily Sun gathered at the weekend that some senators-elect had specifically spelt out criteria for choosing the new Senate president in June.
Top on the criteria, in line with the President-elect, Gen­eral Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption stance, is that the chamber’s number one senator must not be linked with any scandal, whether in or outside the chamber.

Another major attribute is that the next Senate president must not give the new admin­istration any problem. The senators were said to have insisted that the number one senator must not be in oppo­sition to the executive arm of government as was the case with the House of Representa­tives during the early days of the President Goodluck Jona­than administration.
Meanwhile, an initial three-horse race for the Eighth Sen­ate presidency narrowed at the weekend to two between the North-East and the North- Central.
The two major contend­ers as at last weekend were Senators Ahmad Lawan from Yobe State (North-East) and Bukola Saraki from Kwara State (North-Central.)
The two geo-political zones, it was learnt, had commenced intense lobby of ranking senators and the senators-elect and were said to leave nothing to chance by going outside the Senate to secure the much-needed en­dorsements.
It was gathered that two caucuses in the Senate cham­ber; the North-West and the South-West had endorsed Senator Lawan as their candi­date for the position.
Sources stated that no few­er than 12 APC members in the South-West Senate caucus endorsed Lawan last week at a meeting held in Abuja. Senator Lawan had secured a crucial home support, when a former governor of his home state of Yobe, Senator Bu­kar Abba Ibrahim, who also heads the Yobe National As­sembly caucus, endorsed his candidacy for the position.

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