Abuja — A light complexioned beauty radiating a charming feminine grace that from a distance belies her true age, Senator Daisy Danjuma (PDP, Edo South) is the antithesis of her immediate predecessor, the iconoclastic proverb telling Senator Roland Owie.
Her appearance in the Senate is regarded in some quarters as a balm after the stormy if not noticeable tenure of Senator Owie the former Senate Chief Whip whose presence in the immediate past Senate could never go unnoticed in any sitting day.
Today, it is tempting to regard the representation of Edo South in the Senate in the effusive feminine charm Senator Danjuma brings to bear in the Senate chamber.
But not quite so.
Senator Danjuma is one of three female Senators in the second Senate of the fourth republic. The others are Senators Gbemisola Saraki-Fowora (PDP, Kwara) and Victoria Iyabo Anisulowo (PDP, Ogun West).
The first Senate of the fourth republic which sat between May 1999 and June 2003 equally had three female Senators, namely Stella Omu (PDP, Delta South), Khairat Abdulrazaq-Gwadabe and Florence Ita-Giwa.
Fifteen months into their term it has become imperative to make a comparison of the effect and presence of the female Senators to those of their predecessors.
In the first instance it could be easily assumed that the first batch of female Senators could well have been regarded as bad politicians since not one of them returned to the Senate.
Of the lot, only Senator Ita-Giwa has a noticeable place in public life with her role as Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly matters.
In that role, she obviously would have surprised the President and nearly all observers of the federal legislature with her capacity to maintain a harmonious relationship between the National Assembly and the President.
Her assignment to her present role came after she shook the political landscape with her defection from the ANPP to the PDP in 2002 and declaration that she was not going to seek re-election in 2003.
At that time she was assumed to have had at least the advantage of being one of the few villa Senators who could well have been pushed through the primaries to get the party ticket. Besides, she was at that time known to have a chummy relationship with the state Governor, the youthful Donald Duke who she acknowledged was respectful of her.
In declining re-election she told newsmen then that she would remain active in party politics and be satisfied with an ambassadorial nomination.
Some at that time linked her decision not to return to the Senate to some of the terrible encounters she received at the Senate at the height of the face off between the Anyim Senate and the executive.
Then and again, she was ‘harassed’ and at one point in time was almost moved to tears as the ‘male chauvinists’ brought up one issue or the other to hit at her.
Senator Omu on her part is best remembered by one of the legislative consultants and lawyer lobbyists in the Senate, Mr. Wale Oshodin as a mother who brought her experiences in the Prisons system to bear in the Senate.
Senator Omu rose to become the Senate chief whip following the removal of Senator Owie in 2000 and capped her experience in the Senate with a 30 minute show as President Pro-Tempore sometime in 2001 when the Senate President was away.
Senator Omu was known for her dedication to duty in controlling disorder in the Senate chamber and was equally productive in the formulation of bills. Among her most remembered bills was a bill seeking to compel the government to provide milk daily for school children. That bill like most of the private member bills passed by the first National Assembly never saw the light of day.
Like Ita-Giwa, her political implosion came at the height of the crisis between the executive and the Anyim Senate.
Following shrewd political counsel by associates and friends in the Senate, Senator Omu resigned her position as chief whip in order to avoid the obloquy of a forced removal by the majority of the Obasanjo enemies in the Anyim Senate.
Today, she like many other Obasanjo supporters is sitting in the political desert.
If the crisis between the executive and the Anyim Senate imploded in the face of Senators Omu and Ita-Giwa, it conversely brought out the shine in Senator Abdulrazaq-Gwadabe, the female beauty that was universally known as the Amazon of the Senate.
Wife of one of the country’s famous military officers, Col. Lawan Gwadabe (rtd.), Senator Gwadabe like her other colleagues had her good and bad times in the Senate.
A firm follower of the late Chuba Okadigbo, her fortunes rose and fell with Dr. Okadigbo in the Senate.
She would be remembered as one of the most active underground politicians in the former Senate and allegedly passed round the paper soliciting for signatures for the removal of the first Senate President, Chief Evan (s) Enwerem in November 1999.
As Senator representing the FCT, she was appointed chairman of the Committee on FCT by Okadigbo and was retained by Anyim. However, when Anyim moved to consolidate his position after the Kuta witch-hunt that resulted in the sacking of Okadigbo, Senator Gwadabe and most of the remnants of the Okadigbo group were hounded.
Senator Gwadabe’s lot was particularly pitiable at one time as she was forced out of her Committee position following a motion by Senator Mamman Ali alleging her incompetence in dealing with the congestion of traffic in some sections of Abuja!
She was sacked as Committee chairman by Anyim who said that he did so in his capacity as Senate President and chairman of the Senate Committee on Selection!
But as the warmth between the villa and Anyim cooled, the Okadigbo elements with Senator Gwadabe in tow, came calling to help Anyim against the vicious attack by the villa.
Recalled from the wilderness, she became a central point in the attacks and counter attacks that trailed Anyim to the end.
Senator Gwadabe followed Okadigbo to the ANPP after a dismal showing at the PDP senatorial primaries.
She was a continuous show in the ANPP presidential campaigns and could be found during campaign rallies either beside Okadigbo, the party’s vice-presidential flag-bearer or beside Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential flag bearer. There is no doubt that if the ANPP was declared winner that she would have been placed in a leading role in that government.
It is perhaps in that hope that today her public appearances are mostly made at the ongoing presidential election tribunal hearings in Abuja.
With the cloud of witnesses to the record of the female Senators in the first Senate, it is tempting to say that the present set of female Senators are yet to find their feet.
Unlike the first batch of female Senators, the present set are all Committee chairmen.
Senator Anisulowo is chairman of the Committee on States and Local governments, Danjuma is head of the Committee on Women, Children and Youths while Saraki-Fowora is chairman of the Committee on Anti-Corruption.
It is equally tempting to assume that either the present Senate President, Senator Adolphus Wabara has a soft spot for the ladies in the Senate or that Anyim was particularly hard on them. Not more than two, and at one time only one of the three women in the Anyim Senate held positions as Committee chairmen.
When Anyim reconstituted the Senate Committees he appointed a man, Senator John Akpan-Udo-Edehe as chairman of Women Affairs Committee.
Of the present lot, Senator Anisulowo may have made more impression, an impact that obviously underlines her political antecedents over and above her gender mates in the Senate.
As chairman of the Senate Committee on States and local governments she investigated the crisis in Kwande Local Government Area of Benue State returning a sounding indictment on the Benue State Government, Prof. Iyorchia Ayu, Minister of Internal Affairs and Dr. Paul Unongo, the ANPP gubernatorial candidate in the state in the last election.
Her controversial report which has since been stepped down for deliberation was allegedly used as a bargaining tool by some to extract loot from interested parties who did not want the report to be debated.
Her dignified calmness to the house’ ‘mortgage’ of a Senate report supposedly at the altar of lucre also reflects in her calm composure to the frequent teasing she gets in the Senate chambers.
Senator Danjuma, wife of Nigeria’s disengaged army General, Theophulius Danjuma, has never adorned an army uniform to the Senate chambers. However, her carriage and visage outside the immediate enclosure of the chambers betray her role as a General’s wife.
Asked by a reporter to comment on a public matter two Sundays ago, she was brutally frank saying that she was not a pagan and only attends to her husband on Sundays and when at home.
“I no be pagan and on Sunday leave me to look after my husband,” the Senator told Vanguard on telephone in a mixture of pidgin English when asked for her comment to the suit by Northern Governors against the onshore/offshore dichotomy abrogation act.
But Danjuma has been known to be steadfast in the campaign on some female issues and working behind the scenes with administration officials on matters of children, youth and women issues.
An alleged campaign to recall her by some in her constituency may be more because she may not have been as active in the Senate chambers and politics as her predecessor, Senator Owie.
But can there be any comparison with Owie?
Impressions that she was indifferent in the politics of the Senate was cast away recently with disclosures of her presence and endorsement of the resolution by South-South caucus members to remove Senator Kassim Isa Oyofo as Senate Chief Whip.
The other female Senator in the Senate, Senator Saraki-Fowora from Kwara State by all accounts, owes her presence in the Senate to her father, the Oloye.
Her most impressible effect as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Anti-Corruption was when last month, she submitted a report on the Committee’s activities in the last Senate session. Her report, unlike that of other Committees which came in brochures of not more than 40 pages, came in about six bundles of encyclopedia like volumes. She required a chamber attendant to help her carry the reports.
One Senator commenting said that her report reflected the size of corruption in Nigeria.
Besides, Senator Saraki-Fowora has yet to respond to the increasing revelations of corruption in the award of government contracts especially in the past. Unlike the House Committee on Anti-Corruption, her Committee has yet to make an impact and enquiries by reporters on her Committee’s response to some of these revelations have been ignored.
However, her appearance in the Senate chambers on any day she chooses to be present, is itself a wonder. The men do pause. A few senators have been known to leave their seats to sit around her to gist. Talk about the ‘anatomy of female power’.
The present set of female senators have so far enjoyed the ambience of a very conducive atmosphere and indeed, been favoured above their predecessors in the political arrangements in the Senate. None of them have been hounded as all the immediate past female senators were hounded and indeed, frustrated out of the Senate.
There is thus a responsibility on them to show that all the grace, favours and warmth they carry is not in vain.
