10th House: How open voting worked against Wase, Jaji

The 10th National Assembly was inaugurated on Tuesday and presiding officers of the Senate and the House of Representatives were elected during the exercise. The anointed candidates of the All Progressives Congress emerged winners despite stiff opposition to their endorsement by some members of both the governing party and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party.

The National Working Committee of the APC had on May 8, 2023, released the zoning formula for the leadership of the 10th National Assembly, picking Godswill Akpabio (Akwa-Ibom/South-South) President of the Senate; Jibrin Barau (Kano/North-West) for Deputy President of the Senate; Tajudeen Abbas (Kaduna/North-West) for Speaker; and Benjamin Kalu (Abia/South-East) for Deputy Speaker.

Several aspirants for leadership positions in the Senate and the House had kicked against the APC leadership zoning plan, vowing to go ahead and contest against the party’s choice candidates.

The APC candidates and the aspirants aggrieved with the zoning plan of the party had banked on the votes of the newly elected members who are more than the returning members and members-elect in the opposition parties who collectively have more numbers that the ruling party. Nevertheless, Akpabio and Barau won in the Senate while Abbas and Kalu emerged as the presiding officers in the House.

However, the elections in the Senate and the House took different patterns. While an open-secret ballot was adopted in the Senate, it was an open voting in the House, which is one of the major factors many observers of the process have credited for APC’s victory against opponents in the House.

Long before the inauguration, several members-elect, especially freshers, expressed their reservations about open voting, especially at a time when there were more aspirants in the race. There were fears that those who wish to vote for aspirants outside the choice of their party and political godfathers might run into trouble. Some of the aspirants with deep pockets had also dangled carrots before the ‘electorate’ in the chamber, a situation that tested the loyalty of members-elect.

The atmosphere was rife with apprehension, so much that an online news medium, in a report that was deleted the same day, claimed there was a back-door amendment of the Standing Orders of the House, which contains rules guiding the conduct of legislative business in the chamber.

According to the report that was later dismissed by the House, it was alleged that the lawmakers had secretly amended the rules ahead of the inauguration of the 10th Assembly to restrict members ‘open ballot’ in the speakership and deputy speakership elections.

Indeed, Femi Gbajabiamila became Speaker of the 9th House on June 11, 2019. He also had another APC member, Umar Bago, who is now Governor of Niger State, running against his anointed candidacy. By July 25 of the same year, the House had amended its Standing Orders to have new provisions.  This, many political pundits have described as strategic, especially as it came long before there would be any suspicion.

Chairman of the House Committee on Basic Education and Services, Prof Julius Ihonvbere, who chaired the panel that reviewed the rules book in 2019, however, dismissed the report.

Ihonvbere, in a statement released by the secretariat of the ‘Joint Task – 10th Assembly’, a coalition of members-elect of the APC and opposition parties, recalled how the House, on July 25, 2019, unanimously considered and adopted the report by his panel on a series of amendments to the Standing Orders of the House.

The lawmaker also denied interference by Gbajabiamila, in the process.

Ihonvbere, a member of the APC from Edo State, was the chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Review of the Standing Orders of the House of Reps; ex-Chairman, Ad Hoc Committee on the Legislative Agenda of the House of Reps; and ex-Chairman, Ad Hoc Committee on the Revision of the Legislative Agenda of the House of Reps.