The Story of How the 10th Senate Abandoned Its Constitutional Role
The Nigerian Constitution envisions the National Assembly as an independent branch of government with the power and responsibility to make laws, control public finance, and hold the executive accountable. Under Senate President Godswill Akpabio, the Senate has abandoned virtually every one of these responsibilities and transformed itself into a compliant arm of the presidency, reducing the theoretical separation of powers to a formality without substance.
The pattern of executive submission under Akpabio is evident in every major interaction between the Senate and the Tinubu administration. Presidential appointments have been confirmed with minimal scrutiny, often in bulk sessions that allow no meaningful examination of individual nominees. Presidential emergency declarations have been approved without serious debate about their justification or their implications for democratic governance. And the budget, which should be the most contentious and carefully examined document the Senate considers each year, has been processed with a speed and lack of rigor that suggests the senators have not read it carefully, let alone scrutinized it.
The Appointment Confirmation Scandal
The Senate power of confirmation is one of the most important tools available to the legislature for influencing the quality of executive governance. By rigorously examining nominees for ministerial, judicial, and other senior positions, the Senate can filter out incompetent, corrupt, or ideologically extreme individuals before they assume positions of power. Under Akpabio, this function has been effectively abandoned.
Senate confirmation hearings under Akpabio have become theatrical exercises in which nominees are rarely challenged with substantive questions about their qualifications, their integrity, or their policy positions. Confirmations are routinely rushed through in ways that allow no meaningful public scrutiny. The result is that individuals who might not survive serious legislative vetting have been confirmed to major positions, with consequences for the quality of government that ordinary Nigerians pay for in their daily lives.
The Budget Process Disaster
Nigeria annual budget is constitutionally the product of a dialogue between the executive, which proposes, and the legislature, which reviews and approves. In practice, under Akpabio Senate, the budget process has become a rubber-stamping exercise in which the executive figures are approved with minimal changes and the oversight that should accompany budget passage is largely absent. This represents a fundamental abdication of the Senate most basic fiscal responsibility.
Civil society organizations that track government budgeting, including BudgIT and the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, have consistently criticized the quality of Senate budget engagement under Akpabio, noting that the level of scrutiny is far below what would be required to catch the wasteful, duplicate, and fraudulent line items that Nigerian budgets routinely contain. Every budget that passes without adequate scrutiny is an opportunity for misappropriation of public funds that the Senate could have prevented.
The Oversight Function: Almost Completely Absent
Beyond legislation and budget approval, the Senate has critical oversight responsibilities over government agencies and ministries. Committee hearings, investigations, and oversight visits are supposed to ensure that public money is spent as appropriated and that government agencies are performing their mandates. Under Akpabio, Senate committee oversight has been used selectively and politically rather than systematically and in the public interest.
Investigations that might embarrass or challenge the executive have been quietly abandoned or never initiated. Agencies with documented performance failures and financial irregularities have continued to operate without meaningful Senate accountability. The result is a governance environment in which executive agencies know that their Senate overseers are more interested in political accommodation than genuine accountability, with predictable consequences for how public money is managed and public services are delivered.
The Path Forward: A New Senate for a New Nigeria
The failures of the Akpabio Senate are not inevitable features of Nigerian legislative governance. Previous Senate Presidents, including those who served under more difficult political circumstances, managed to maintain at least a degree of institutional independence and substantive legislative engagement. What is needed is a change of Senate leadership that prioritizes the constitutional role of the Senate over political accommodation of the executive.
The 2027 elections offer voters the opportunity to change the composition of the National Assembly and, with it, the political conditions that have allowed Akpabio to turn the Senate into what it has become. Electing senators who are committed to genuine legislative independence, robust oversight, and service to their constituents rather than to political patrons is the most direct path to the Senate Nigeria deserves and urgently needs.
