It is not by accident that Ike Ekweremadu has become Nigeria’s longest serving Deputy Senate President. He does not only possess the skills needed to survive the political land mines in the upper legislative chamber, he also has experience on his side, writes Segun James
In a country full of both ambition and frustration, the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu is a role model. Without doubts, he has expanded the frontiers of legislative activities at a time when Nigerians are most disenchanted with that arm of government. He embodies the best in political engineering in the country.
Following the loss by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last general election, the leadership of the party in the National Assembly suddenly found itself in the opposition. A position it never envisaged, but the reality was that the party was no longer in power. So it was within this period that Ike Ekweremadu was made the Deputy President of the Senate.
Ekweremadu is a name that has featured prominently in the Nigerian political stage for over a decade.
He is a patriot who says he is more concerned about fixing the country’s biting economic and security than saving his job as deputy president when he was charged along with Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki for forging the Senate Rules. Besides, when the allegation was rife that he was dumping the PDP for the All Progressives Congress (APC), he debunked the report, saying that such reports were not only false, but baseless. Such was the stuff that Ekweremadu is made of.
Ike Ekweremadu is a Nigerian politician and lawyer from Enugu State who has served in the Senate of Nigeria since May 2003 and he has been Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate for the third consecutive time.
Born in 1962 at Amachara Mpu in Aninri local government area of Enugu State, he is of Igbo origin. He holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Law from the University of Nigeria, Nigeria and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1987. He also holds Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Law from the University of Abuja, Nigeria.
In 2002, Ekweremadu was appointed Secretary to the Enugu State Government, before then he was Chairman of Aninri LGA in 1997 and won the Best Local Government Chairman Award in Enugu State at the time. He was appointed the Chief of Staff of the Enugu State Government House.
On April 12, 2003 he was elected to the Nigerian Senate. In 2005, Ike Ekweremadu was beaten in the race for President of the Senate of Nigeria by Senator Kenechukwu Nnamani. He was returned in the April 29, 2007 Nigerian National Assembly election, and retained his position as Deputy Senate President.
The lawmaker was reelected as Senator for Enugu West in the April 2011 elections, receiving 112,806 votes. The closest runner-up was the candidate of the party, Jackson Ezeoffor, who got 7,522 votes.
A grassroots politician, Ekweremadu started off as the President of his age grade association in his rural Mpu community, Aninri local government, Enugu State. He went on to become the President of his town’s development union for many years. Then he mounted the saddle as the Secretary of the body agitating for the creation of Aninri LGA out of Awgu and he later, at the request of the Aninri leaders of thought, after it was created by the administration of late General Sani Abacha, became the first elected chairman of the local government in 2007. Record also has it that he was voted the best council chairman in that era.
He was, however, appointed the Chief of Staff to former Governor Chimaroke Nnamani in 1999, an office that was to be replicated by other States and endures till date. Ekweremadu was elevated to the position of Secretary to the Government of Enugu State in 2002 and held the office until he was elected Senator representing Enugu West senatorial district in 2003.
He has been re-elected for additional three straight terms in 2007, 2011, and 2015. He has seen presiding officers rise and fall, he has seen legislative coups and counter coups, and like the old broom, he certainly knows every corner of the house.
Ekweremadu had first baptism of fire into the intrigues and power play at the National Assembly when he ran for the senate presidency against his kinsman, Senator Ken Nnamani, who eventually had the upper hand, largely through a massive vote by northern Senators Forum. But, with equanimity, he shrugged off the setback, played his card well, and returned to the Senate in 2007.
It was in the sixth senate that Ekweremadu’s beauty as a stabilising force in the Senate, an intellectual lawmaker, a levelheaded politician, and jinx-breaker came to visible national reckoning. Often described as a partnership that worked, one thing that the Senator David Mark and Ekweremadu Senate Presidency will be remembered for is stability. Their eight years reign was the only period there was no attempt at impeachment of presiding officers.
Before them, the senate presidency was a musical chair, rocking and virtually throwing away most of its occupants. For instance, the 4th Senate (1999-2003) produced three senate presidents. in a period of four years, namely, Senators Evan Enwerem, Chuba Okadigbo, and Pius Anyim, while the fifth Senate (2003-2007) produced two. They were Senators Adophus Wabara and Ken Nnamani, amid other botched legislative coups and imbroglios in-between. They were all brought down by the proverbial banana pill, no thanks to executive interference and willing allies in the Senate.
Although Mark showed unprecedented maturity and statesmanship in the handling of the Senate affairs, there is no doubt that the unalloyed loyalty and support of his deputy made his tenure rancor-free. Unlike in the first eight years when there was much backstabbing as even deputies traded off their principals, Ekweremadu had the back of Mark well covered. Senators who served between 2007 and 2011 also attest to Ekweremadu’s ability to calm frayed nerves and to broker truce. Even when there appeared to be executive-legislature disagreement, he knew how to do the leg walk and get things back on track.
While Ekweremadu’s unforeseen reemergence as the Deputy President of the Senate in 2015, despite PDP’s loss of majority in the Senate took Nigerians by surprise, there were also those who insisted they were not taken aback. A veteran in the business, Ekweremadu always knew that politics of the legislature is a game of number and he is playing it right.
Although members of the Senate Unity Forum backed by the APC leadership attributed their loss to the conduct of the election while they were attending a meeting purportedly called by the party leadership at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, keen political observers insist their presence would not have made any difference since the APC ranks were already divided, while the PDP were already decided on block votes for Saraki and Ekweremadu in Senate, and Hon. Yakubu Dogara in the House of Representatives during that meting that lasted into the wee hours of the June 9, 2015.
The Saraki and Ekweremadu leadership has been through crucibles as the then APC spokesperson declared that the election of both the Senate and the House presiding officers were unacceptable to the party. Although President Muhammadu Buhari had issued a statement to the effect that though he would have preferred the emergence of those anointed by the party, he would nevertheless work with those elected by the lawmakers. The events that followed left political observers in no doubt that elements within the APC government were hell-bent on dislodging the Saraki and his deputy. This was particularly after Saraki failed to follow the dictates of the party in the emergence of principal officers of the party like Dogara. He instead followed the existing tradition of allowing geo-political Senate caucuses to elect occupants of offices zoned to them.
The duo of Saraki and Ekweremadu had also been victims of political persecutions. Saraki and his deputy were arraigned before an Abuja High Court for alleged forgery of Senate Standing Rule, a crime both denied.
It was at this point that Ekweremadu, who has also had an international stint as the Speaker of ECOWAS Parliament, raised the alarm before the international community. He told the world that the nation’s democracy was endangered because of what he described as “trumped up charges preferred against himself, Senator Bukola Saraki, and two others.”
He wrote: “You may, thereafter, judge for yourself whether the federal government, acting through the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), has any justification whatsoever to generate our names for trial. The list of the accused persons appear to have been politically generated because you cannot by the documents attached, relate any of our names to the offence for which we are now being charged.
“You may also wish to judge for yourself whether this trial orchestrated against me is not a political trial, calculated witch-hunt, barefaced intimidation, and a clear attempt to emasculate the parliament and silence me as the leader and highest ranking member of the opposition in Nigeria”.
Prior to their arraignment, many had questioned the constitutional powers of the executive to investigate the conduct of the business of another arm of government. Senator Gilbert Nnaji (PDP, Enugu East), had also instituted a civil suit before the Federal High Court, Abuja, challenging the powers of the police, an executive agency, to pry into the internal affairs of the Senate.
Also counting for Ekweremadu is his politics without bitterness and placing national interest above personal or partisan interest. On the day the PDP Senate caucus staged a walkout over the insistence of the Senate President and APC caucus to go ahead with the screening of the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amechi, Ekweremadu remained on his seat. He recognised that by virtue of the provisions of Section 50 of the Constitution, which allows any Senator-elect, whether of the majority or minority stock, to run for the Office of the Senate President or Deputy President of the Senate, he became Deputy President of the entire Senate, not just that of the PDP.
Again, he has left no one in doubt that good governance of Nigeria is beyond party sentiments. He has repeatedly said that if the party in power fails, that it is Nigerians masses that would suffer. He said his idea of opposition was not to run a government down or wish it to fail.
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It was in the 6th Senate that Ekweremadu’s beauty as a stabilising force in the Senate, an intellectual lawmaker, a levelheaded politician, and jinx-breaker came to visible national reckoning. Often described as a partnership that worked, one thing that the Senator David Mark and Ekweremadu Senate Presidency will be remembered for is stability. Their eight years reign was the only period there were no attempt at impeachment of presiding officer.
