The Senate on Wednesday reversed a clause in its standing orders that had required senators-elect to choose presiding officers before taking their oath of office, restoring the old procedure that lets them elect leaders first. The move followed a motion for rescission and recommittal sponsored by Opeyemi Bamidele during plenary presided over by Deputy Senate President Jibrin Barau.
The chamber said the earlier provision, introduced under orders 2 and 3 of the amended standing orders, could create constitutional inconsistencies and unintended tensions with section 52 of the 1999 constitution. With the reversal, senators-elect can again vote for the Senate president and deputy president before taking the oath, a return to the long-standing parliamentary practice.
The decision also settled, at least for now, a dispute that had already tested tempers on the floor. On Wednesday, Adams Oshiomhole clashed with Senate President Godswill Akpabio over the standing orders amendments, and the issue resurfaced when Oshiomhole raised a point of order during the rescission debate. The development generated mild tension in the chamber as Bamidele accused him of causing unnecessary drama and cited order 52 of the Senate standing rules in response.
Bamidele told the chamber, “We are not going to allow this to continue,” and later invoked order 52, saying it bars the Senate from reconsidering a question it has already settled in the current session except through a substantive motion for decision. Oshiomhole pushed back without escalating the row, saying, “This shows that when there are amendments, the next time, we should allow debate. That’s it,” a line that captured the chamber’s unease over how the rule had been changed in the first place.
The amendment had altered the procedure used in the 11th Senate by requiring newly elected senators to elect a Senate president before being sworn in. Under the amended order 2, the clerk to the National Assembly was to administer the oath of allegiance and oath of membership after roll call and confirmation of writs of election, while order 3 said a senator-elect could not take part in any proceedings, including voting for the election of the Senate president and deputy president, until the oaths were taken. The Senate said the reversal was needed to keep its rules aligned with constitutional provisions, parliamentary conventions and legislative practice, and to avoid the kind of tension the earlier wording had already produced.
By adopting the rescission, the Senate did more than undo a contentious clause. It reset the rulebook to the familiar sequence that has governed the opening of a new chamber, and it removed a procedural obstacle that had already become a political fight. The remaining question is not whether the chamber can change its rules, but how far it can go without drawing the kind of constitutional and internal backlash that Akpabio and his colleagues just spent a day trying to contain.
