Before the inauguration of the 10th National Assembly and the subsequent emergence of Godswill Akpabio as the president of the senate, a cross-section of the political class was fiercely opposed to his aspiration. Their grouse was how his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, endorsed him.
Some welcomed the zoning of the position to the South-South region but faulted the extra step of micro-zoning it to an individual.
Another set was solely upset that the then president-elect, Bola Tinubu, influenced the choice of Akpabio. To them, that would amount to an outright hijack of the legislature by the presidency which is antithetical to the principle of separation of powers. Then while others canvassed that the contest should be thrown open for everyone interested, the rest specifically clamoured for their various zones as against Akpabio’s South-South. But common to all those categories was the claim of insufficient consultation before settling on Akpabio.
And quite indeed,…