Last week, it seemed some form of peace had finally come to the Senate after many months of stalemate caused by Senate President Bukola Saraki's audacious grab for power. A nearly similar stalemate had pervaded the House of Representatives until Speaker Yakubu Dogara, who had also snatched power from the feeble hands of his party's leaders, foresightedly orchestrated peace. The more measured Hon Dogara may have defied his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), but he still managed to be elected in a free and fair legislative leadership election on June 9 without any hanky-panky. Party leaders were riled by his affront, but they forgave his bold grab for power when he shifted ground to accommodate his party's preferred principal officers.

Senator Saraki was less incommoded by party disquiet. Not only did he defy party leaders, he launched into a vicious and systematic propaganda to whittle down their influence in, and hold on, both the party and the legislature, and to create a legislative island independent of his party and autonomous in every conceivable administrative and lawmaking way. Senator Saraki’s effort to cobble together an agreement with party leaders, therefore, appeared compromised right from the foundation. It is true his defiance of party and party leaders is not structurally different from that of Hon Dogara. But by introducing a sleight of hand into the balloting process on that June 9 morning through which he disenfranchised nearly all his colleagues in the APC, and entering into what his party leaders described as a sinister deal to undermine his party and install an opposition senator as his deputy, it made any future peace deal virtually impossible.

When, despite this major structural obstacle to peace in the Senate, news filtered out that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Hon Dogara were involved with others in cobbling together a peace deal with Senator Saraki, it was not clear by what celestial magic they hoped to achieve this outcome. Hon Dogara was said to have leaned on Senator Saraki to concede to the party in respect of the list of the preferred principal officers, arguing that since he himself yielded ground and secured peace, the party would be minded to also give peace a chance in the Senate. The reports also indicated that at a point, the beleaguered Senate President was even willing to concede to the party, and had in fact tried to persuade the current principal officers to step down. That he failed to persuade them is probably a testimony to how long he remained unwisely inflexible. The current principal officers have obviously become accustomed to acting as principal officers to want to contemplate a demotion.

It was also hoped that if Senator Saraki bowed to party wishes, it would go a long way in procuring a political solution to his case with the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), a case some lawyers have described as pretty bad. Why and how the legislators and peacemakers attempt to establish a link between the court case and peace deal in the Senate is hard to explain. Surely they must know that if a so-called political solution is found to the CCT case, it would sound a death knell to President Muhammadu Buhari's anti-graft campaign. The political cost to the president would be imponderable. In like manner, however, if a deal is not brokered soon, not only would the Senate seethe with terrible disquiet, Senator Saraki himself would not have peace of mind. In short, Senator Saraki has managed to work himself into such a bind that if peace is procured in the Senate he, the party and the president are damned, and if peace is not procured, he is equally damned.

It is passing strange that in all the attempts to find peace in the National Assembly, all the speculated peace deals were expected to leave both Senator Saraki and Hon Dogara in their plum seats. Peace is an indication of give and take, and all parties to a conflict are generally expected to yield ground. But given the original structure of the conflicts in which Senator Saraki and Hon Dogara defied their party, the principal officers were not even part of the disagreement. Therefore, by securing the emplacement of the party's principal officers, the party has not gained much, but has instead humiliatingly shifted ground to the unlimited advantage of both Senator Saraki and Hon Dogara. The Speaker saw this quickly, and adjusted his tactics. It says a lot about the Senate President’s judgement that he failed to grab his chance.