Akpabio And The Shock Absorber Presidency Of The Senate

By Olumide Bajulaiye
There is a way to judge a Senate President that has little to do with the number of bills passed, the size of the constituency projects attracted to his district or the number of times his name appears in newspaper headlines.

It is to ask a more fundamental question:
When the political system begins to shake, who absorbs the shock?

That is perhaps the most under-examined dimension of Senator Godswill Akpabio’s leadership of Nigeria’s 10th Senate.

The Senate President has operated at the intersection of three powerful forces: an ambitious presidency, an assertive legislature and an increasingly impatient Nigerian public.

Each has its own expectations. Each can pull the political system in a different direction.
Akpabio’s unusual contribution has been his capacity to absorb those competing pressures without allowing every disagreement to become a constitutional crisis.

That is not the kind of achievement that necessarily produces dramatic headlines.
But in a presidential democracy as politically combustible as Nigeria, it may be one of the most important.

The Senate is not a choir
One misconception about legislative leadership is that a successful Senate President must make senators sing from the same hymn book.
That is impossible.
The Senate is supposed to contain disagreement. Senators represent different states, parties, interests, ambitions and constituencies. Even members of the same political party will not always agree.
The real test, therefore, is not whether disagreement exists.

It is whether disagreement can be managed without destroying the institution.
This is where Akpabio’s political experience becomes significant.
Before arriving at the National Assembly leadership, he had already served as a governor, minister and senator. He understands something that textbooks sometimes fail to capture: politics is not merely the management of ideas; it is the management of people, interests and expectations.

That experience has given him an instinct for when to push, when to negotiate and when to allow political temperature to fall.
And Nigeria desperately needs that instinct.
The forgotten job of a Senate President
The Senate President is not simply the person who sits in the chair during plenary.
He is, in many respects, an institutional traffic controller.

He must allow the executive to govern without allowing the legislature to become an appendage of the executive.
He must protect the authority of the Senate without turning every disagreement with the presidency into a confrontation.
He must accommodate opposition senators without allowing opposition politics to paralyse government business.

He must also manage senators who may be colleagues today and political competitors tomorrow.

That is an extraordinarily difficult balancing act.
Akpabio’s strongest argument may therefore not be that he has eliminated political conflict. Nobody could.
His argument is that conflict has not been allowed to become the permanent operating system of the 10th Senate.

The Akpabio paradox
There is an interesting paradox about Akpabio.
His personality is larger than the office.
He is naturally theatrical, outspoken and politically recognisable. Yet the institution he leads requires something different: restraint, negotiation and procedural discipline.
That tension may actually explain some of the controversies surrounding him.

Akpabio does not lead from the background. He is visible. He speaks. He jokes. He engages. He sometimes provokes reactions.
But perhaps the more important question is not whether every Nigerian likes his style.
The question is whether his style has prevented the Senate from functioning.
The answer, so far, is no.

And that distinction matters.
Democracy does not require leaders to be universally popular. It requires institutions to remain functional.
His greatest political asset may be his enemies
There is another dimension rarely discussed.
A Senate President who has no critics is probably not doing politics.

Akpabio has critics inside and outside the National Assembly. Some question his style. Some question his political choices. Others question the relationship between the Senate leadership and the presidency.
But criticism itself is not evidence of institutional failure.
Indeed, one of the strongest tests of legislative leadership is whether an institution can contain fierce disagreement while continuing to conduct its constitutional business.
The 10th Senate has demonstrated that capacity.

That deserves recognition.
From confrontation to conversation
Nigeria has spent much of its democratic history oscillating between two extremes.
At one extreme is the legislature that behaves as though its principal constitutional duty is to fight the executive.

At the other is a legislature that becomes so close to the executive that its independence is questioned.

The better model is neither.
The better model is productive tension.
A strong legislature should be capable of saying “No” to the president when necessary, but it should also be capable of saying “Yes” when a presidential proposal serves the national interest.
Akpabio appears to understand that distinction.
His approach has often favoured engagement over permanent confrontation.

Critics may describe that as excessive closeness to President Bola Tinubu.
Supporters see it differently: as recognition that Nigeria cannot afford four years of institutional warfare between the executive and legislature.
There is a difference between independence and hostility.

The Senate can cooperate with the presidency without surrendering its constitutional identity.
The quiet value of political experience
Nigeria sometimes celebrates technocratic competence while underestimating political competence.

But politics is a profession.
Passing legislation requires votes. Votes require persuasion. Persuasion requires relationships. Relationships require trust, negotiation and an understanding of human behaviour.
Akpabio has spent decades developing those political muscles.
That does not make him infallible.
It does, however, make him particularly suited to an office where the ability to bring people together can be as important as knowledge of parliamentary procedure.
A Senate President does not merely preside over debates.
He must build enough consensus for the institution to move.

The real legacy question
Eventually, the history of the 10th Senate will not be written solely around the speeches of its President.
It will be judged by whether Nigeria’s legislature became more consequential, whether laws were made more efficiently, whether oversight remained meaningful, whether senators were able to disagree without destroying institutional relationships and whether the Senate contributed to political stability at a difficult moment in the country’s history.

That is where Akpabio’s leadership deserves a different conversation.
Perhaps his greatest contribution is not any single bill or political episode.
Perhaps it is that he has helped demonstrate that the Senate can be a pressure valve rather than a pressure cooker.
In a country where political disagreement can quickly become institutional confrontation, that is no small achievement.

Nigeria does not need a Senate President who makes everyone happy.
It needs one who can keep everyone talking.
And that may ultimately be the most important case for Godswill Akpabio’s stewardship of the 10th Senate.

The greatest Senate President may not always be the one who wins every argument. Sometimes, he is the one who prevents the argument from breaking the institution.

Olumide Bajulaiye is the Publisher, Daily Dispatch Newspaper.