THERE is a war raging in the Red Chamber. Not a war of ideas , God forbid we should ever be so lucky ,but a war of ambition, ego, and raw political survival dressed up in procedural language. Senator Adams Oshiomole and Senate President Godswill Akpabio are at each other’s throats, and the theatre has been magnificent, if you enjoy watching two powerful men in an expensive building fight over who gets to sit in the most expensive chair.
Oshiomole fired the first public salvo in mid-June, appearing on Seun Okinbaloye’s Mic On Podcast and unloading on Akpabio with the kind of specificity that tells you this has been festering for a while. He accused the Senate President of paranoia, exclusion, nepotism, and what he called a ‘deep-seated bias’ against him.
He said Akpabio gets visibly nervous whenever he sees Oshiomole talking to fellow senators on the floor. He claimed Akpabio’s daughter was slotted into a ‘juicy’ position at NNPC Limited through the back door.He predicted that senators are quietly ‘grumbling’ and that the 11th Senate will look very different from the current one.
Strong claims. But let us be clear about something before we turn Oshiomole into a victim: this is not a man who stumbled innocently into a fight. Oshiomole knows exactly what he is doing. He is a former two-term governor of Edo State, a former All Progressives Congress (APC )National Chairman and a man with a taste for the jugular in political combat. He is building a case, cultivating grievances, and positioning himself for the Senate Presidency in the 11th Assembly.
The podcast appearance was not a therapy session. It was a calculated political offensive, aimed at softening the ground and delegitimising Akpabio before the real battle begins.
The backstory is important. Earlier this year, Akpabio pushed through an amendment to Senate Standing Orders 4 and 5 in what I will charitably call a masterclass in legislative self-preservation. The new rule requires that any candidate for Senate President must have served at least two consecutive four-year terms with one of those terms being in the current Senate. On its face it sounds like a rule about experience. In practice it was a missile aimed at two specific people: Oshiomole, who is serving his first term as senator, and Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State, who has been widely tipped to return to the Senate in 2027 and contest the top job.
Mind you, neither of those men was mentioned by name in the rule. They didn’t have to be. The math did the naming for Akpabio.
What happened next on the Senate floor was even more revealing. The day after the amendment was passed, Oshiomole stood up to protest that the official record the Votes and Proceedings did not accurately reflect what senators had agreed to in their executive session. Akpabio refused to recognise him. His microphone was cut. When Oshiomole kept shouting ‘Point of Order!’, Akpabio threatened to have him removed by the Serjeant-at-Arms. It was the kind of scene you expect in a badly organised student union meeting, not the upper chamber of Africa’s most populous democracy.
But Oshiomole is not a man you silence easily. He took the fight outside and landed what may have been his sharpest blow: if the new rule truly required consecutive, uninterrupted senate service, then Akpabio himself does not qualify. Akpabio served in the Senate, left to become Minister of Niger Delta Affairs under Goodluck Jonathan, and then returned. His service was not consecutive. Oshiomole publicly asked him to ‘lead by example and vacate the seat.’ Whether this argument has legal traction or not, politically it was a wrecking ball.
Now, the media space has been covering this like it is a principled dispute about institutional integrity. The only principle at stake here is power. Akpabio wants to remain Senate President after 2027, assuming President Tinubu wins re-election and the APC holds the legislature. Oshiomole, who is also from the South-South, wants his shot at the same seat. Two big men, one throne. That is the entire story.
Our legislators have a remarkable talent for converting personal ambition into constitutional crisis. The Senate Standing Orders are meant to be working rules for the business of lawmaking, not chess pieces in an intra-party succession battle. When you start amending fundamental rules specifically to exclude political rivals, you are not legislating , you are scheming. And the chamber’s credibility pays the price.
Oshiomole’s prediction that the 11th Senate will ‘look drastically different’ because lawmakers are grumbling also warrants scrutiny. In my experience, Nigerian senators grumble behind closed doors about everything from committee assignments to the car park. Most of them will fall in line when the time comes, because falling in line is how you survive and prosper in Nigerian legislative politics. The grievances are real but the spine is usually absent.
History is instructive here: in the 9th Assembly, there were senators who privately complained bitterly about the leadership of Ahmed Lawan, yet when it mattered, the votes were always there. The idea that there is a quiet revolution brewing among Red Chamber members, one strong enough to sweep Akpabio aside without the backing of the Presidency, strains credulity unless Oshiomole has guarantees from Aso Rock that he has not yet disclosed publicly.
What we are watching, stripped of all its procedural dressing, is two major political actors from the South-South fighting over regional dominance and post-Tinubu positioning. Akpabio has the chair. Oshiomole has the grievances, the media relationships, and crucially the political pedigree as a former APC governor and former party chairman. Neither of them is weak. Neither is going away. And both know that the outcome of the 2027 elections will determine which of them history remembers fondly.
So who blinks first? My reading is that nobody blinks. This fight goes the distance. Oshiomole will continue his media campaign, leveraging his status as a party elder to build enough momentum for a Senate leadership bid. Akpabio will continue using procedural tools and the advantages of incumbency to hem him in, while being careful not to appear so heavy-handed that he loses sympathy within the chamber.
Both men understand that the ultimate referee is President Tinubu, and whoever has his ear when the National Assembly inauguration approaches in 2027 will likely prevail. The Senate, meanwhile, will continue its tradition of producing more drama than legislation which, when you think about it, has been the story of our legislative branch for the better part of two decades.
What should concern ordinary Nigerians is not who wins this duel but what it costs the institution. The Senate’s job is to scrutinise the executive, approve budgets, pass laws that affect 220 million people, and provide genuine oversight on agencies like NNPCL that manage our national resources. Every hour spent on this internal warfare is an hour not spent doing any of that.
Every rule amended to target a political rival is a rule that has been permanently weakened for future abuse by whoever holds the gavel next. And make no mistake whatever tool Akpabio uses today to shut Oshiomole out, some future Senate President will use the same tool against someone else tomorrow. That is how institutional decay works. It is never one man’s problem; it always becomes everybody’s problem eventually.
Strong institutions are not built by strong men protecting their seats. They are built by men and women who place the integrity of the house above their own ambition. On the available evidence, neither Oshiomole nor Akpabio is that person right now.
- Nda-Isaiah is a political analyst based in Abuja and can be reached on jonesdryx@gmail.com. His syndicated column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Saturday.