The drama that has characterised the screening of President Bola Tinubu’s ministerial nominees at the Senate, which began on Monday July 31st, took an interesting twist on Wednesday, August 2, specifically during the screening of Dele Alake, the Senior Adviser to the President on Special Duties, Communications and Strategy.
After he was bombarded with questions which the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio felt were too mundane, Alake was finally allowed to respond to a question from Oyelola Yisa Ashiru, the lawmaker representing Kwara South Senatorial District for a second time in the National Assembly.
Ashiru had asked what Alake would likely do to improve the nation’s internally generated revenue through tourism. As much as he tried to answer the question to the best of his ability, citing first, improved security as the major determinant of an enhanced tourism sector, and later, the provision of infrastructures to project the tourism potentials of the country, his answers didn’t seem to please Akpabio. Twice, the Senate President interjected his line of argument, insisting that he (Alake) was talking off point, unable to properly answer the question by stating the initiatives he would need to bring to bear for tourism to flourish.
It took the intervention of the Senate Majority Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele representing Ekiti Central, who walked up to Akpabio and asked him to simmer down on his attack on Alake before he (Akpabio) finally ended his interjections. This was beside the two times Bamidele came to the defence of Alake; first when Senator Adamu Ailero, representing Kebbi Central, who, quoting from the Senate rule book, asked that Akpabio caution other senators who tried to interrupt the Senate Minority Leader, Mwadkwon Davou, representing Plateau North. Davou had asked Alake a question about the time he called supporters of the Labour Party ‘wild dogs,’ but his question was drowned by the noise of other member s of the Senate.
Again, Bamidele sprang up in Alake’s defence when he was asked by Davou to recite the second stanza of the national anthem, to which the majority leader pleaded with Akpabio to expunge the question as it was irrelevant. He had argued that none of the other nominees had been asked to recite the stanza. Akpabio granted him his wish.
With the interjection, it would appear as if the Senate President was trying to take his pound of flesh from Alake as the latter almost marred his journey to becoming senate president. Sources close to THEWILL reveal that Alake chose to support the candidacy of Senator Abdulaziz Yari, a former governor of Zamfara State, against Akpabio who was the choice of the majority of senators. However, when his principal, the president, threw his weight behind Akpabio’s candidacy and got the party to fall in line, the source revealed that Alake had no choice but to grudgingly withdraw his support for Yari. Seeing Alake’s name on the list of ministerial nominees, Akpabio began to bay for blood. Alake would have been minced meat for Akpabio but for Bamidele’s intervention.
Ivory Ukonu is a versatile journalist with many years of experience, with entertainment and society reporting as her area of core competence.
