REVIEW: Senate President: The Saraki Coup Story

Former Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara with the support of senators elected on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP intriguingly outsmarted his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC on Tuesday morning to emerge the Senate President.

Saraki was unanimously elected the President of 8th session of the Senate of Nigeria National Assembly by less than 60 senators who were present at the inauguration of the new session of the Senate and was subsequently sworn in by Abubakar Sani, the clerk of the National Assembly.

APC is in majority control of the Senate with 59 members while the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has 49 members.

Saraki was nominated by Sani Yarima, former governor of Zamfara state. Dino Melaye, from Kogi state, seconded his nomination.

The clerk of the national assembly, called for more nominations and there was none, he declared Bukola the duly elected president of the senate.

Ahmad Lawan, the preferred candidate of the APC, was not nominated. Indeed, NaijaHitFactory Reporters can confirm that Lawan was not present at the chamber of the Senate during the election as the meeting of President Muhammadu Buhari with lawmakers elected on the platform of APC was supposed to be going on at the International Conference Centre which is several kilometres away from the National Assembly at the time of the sitting.

NaijaHitFactory Reporters learnt that senators loyal to Saraki boycotted the peace meeting called by President Muhammadu Buhari on his arrival from Germany in the early hours of today.

The meeting was called to douse controversies generated by the emergence of Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila, as APC’s candidates for Senate Presidency and Speakership in a straw poll conducted by the party at the weekend. But as some other legislators were heading for the Conference Centre, Senators supporting Saraki, especially those elected on the platform of PDP were already seated awaiting inauguration.

Indications that the inauguration will still hold emerged when the Clerk of the National Assembly entered the Chamber. Policemen and officials of other security had as early as 6:00 am blocked the road leading to the National Assembly to stop human and vehicular movement into the premises.

The emergence of Saraki as the Senate President was the actualisation of a coup plotted against the APC by PDP Senators elected on the platform of the opposition party on Monday night. At the end of the meeting which ended on Tuesday morning, the PDP Senators had endorsed the candidature Saraki as President of the Senate and Honourable Yakubu Dogara as the speaker of the House of Representatives.

This is against the preference of Lawan and Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila respectively for the same position.

Saraki who defected from PDP to APC in 2013 promised to cede the position of Deputy Senate President to his former party to get the support of the opposition legislators.

Hence, it was not a surprise that former Deputy Senate President Ike Ekewremandu was promptly nominated for the position of Deputy Senate President after the election of Saraki. Senator Ekweremandu was subsequently elected the Deputy Senate President.

He defeated Ali Ndume of APC, garnering 54 votes as against Ndume’s 20.

ALBUM REVIEW: Is Skales Really a "Man of the Year"?

For the introductory skit to his Man of the Year album, Skales recruits Do-2d-tun straight out of Olamide’s Baddest Guy Ever Liveth. An album that curiously begins in copycat mode clearly cares nothing for originality. As a matter of fact, the title “Man of the Year” is quite familiar. Did Phyno not have a song called that?

Skales, acronym for Seek Knowledge Acquire Large Entreprenurial Skills, is a self-professed seeker. He rummages through other people’s material and converts it to make his own hits. In his latest album, he gives himself a laurel for these efforts in his album title.

Man of the Year is about aggregating sounds of potential hits under an umbrella, but Skales fails to realize that it is not a rainy day. People don’t get accolades for appropriating other people’s work.

Make no mistakes; Skales is a competent singer. His song writing and delivery are at par with, if not slightly above acceptable standards, but from inception he has failed to distinguish himself as a unique brand of African rhythms biting into Hip-Hop ethos.

Reekado Banks of Mavin Records, Ice Prince, Burna Boy, Phyno, Davido OBO, Olamide YBNL, Victoria Kimani of Chocolate City amongst others lend him their voices for the twenty-track album to which he was generous enough to add two bonus tracks, English and French versions of his biggest hit, “Shake Body”.

He is by himself on eight tracks: “What’s Up” and “I Am For Real” stand out as sterling efforts, but their successes should not be attributed to Skales. For instance, “What’s Up” starts off with him styling his verses after Jazzman Olofin of “Raise The Roof” fame. “I Am For Real” borrows its beat from R.Kelly’s Slow Wind Remix and the lyrical phrasing is straight out of “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want”, a song on Rihanna’s debut album, Music of the Sun.

“I’m A Winner”, the first song on the album, sounds like Crunk with a decent dose of Naija optimism/bragging. In “Always”, he briefly references D’banj’s ‘Fall in Love’ from ‘The Entertainer’. When Skales strives to sound like himself, he is seemingly styled liked a hybrid of Wizkid and Wande Coal.

An allocutus can almost be made on his behalf that no idea is original. Yes, this is true, but Nas also opines further in that eponymous song from ‘The Lost Tapes’–which Skales hasn’t listened to because he did not borrow from it—that it is never what you do, but how you do it. Beyond not breathing his brand into these songs, Skales did not list his references on his album sleeve. Clearly history is not an exerting teacher in the Nigerian musicscape if one refers to 2Face’s song, Flex, where he controversially claimed to have featured R.Kelly himself.

The lack of originality does not make these songs abysmally bad but it also doesn’t save them from the triteness that is the rule with contemporary Nigerian songs. Skale’s music is very melodious, his lyrical phrasing is quite delightful, the beats from his producers (mostly Jaypizzle) are charming—the finished product will not leave a dance floor unattended but neither will it leave a lasting impression.