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"Go Home and Work with Your Governor": Senate Suspends Plenary for Primaries as Lawmakers Face Political Reckoning
The National Assembly is about to fall silent — and the silence will be the loudest political signal yet that the 2027 election season has devoured the legislative calendar. On Tuesday, 28 April 2026, Senate President Godswill Akpabio announced that the upper chamber will suspend plenary sessions from Thursday, 30 April, to allow lawmakers to participate in their respective political parties' primary elections — a window that, under the Independent National Electoral Commission's (INEC) timetable, runs from 23 April to 30 May 2026. Committee work, he assured the chamber, would continue. But the headline — and the subtext — was about more than a calendar adjustment. It was about the reality that Nigeria's legislators, long sheltered in the corridors of Abuja, must now return to their constituencies and fight for their political lives.
“Therefore, many senators will not be here. So, there'll be need for us to have a slight adjournment of the plenary but committees can still continue with their oversight functions,” Akpabio said at Tuesday's sitting, his words both a factual observation and a quiet acknowledgment of the anxiety rippling through the Red Chamber. He urged the Senate to complete outstanding legislative business before the Thursday deadline, adding: “We want to finish pending matters before Thursday so that senators can proceed to join their constituents for primaries according to their parties”. He also appealed to party leaders — naming the APC, PDP, ADC, PRP and Accord Party — to schedule their primaries from next week onward, warning that any senator forced to choose between primaries and plenary would short-change their constituents.
A Tradition, But Not a Formality
Suspending plenary for party primaries is a well-worn tradition in both chambers of the National Assembly — a practical concession to the reality that lawmakers are, first and last, politicians who must periodically renew their electoral mandates. Section 84 of the Electoral Act provides that parties may choose candidates through direct primaries, indirect primaries, or consensus arrangements, provided these methods adhere strictly to internal party constitutions and democratic principles. INEC is legally empowered to observe party primaries and ensure that procedures are not manipulated; failure by political parties to comply with the legal framework can lead to the rejection of candidates or legal disputes that may nullify nominations.
What makes this year's adjournment different from previous cycles, however, is the political context in which it arrives. The 2027 elections are shaping up to be the most fiercely contested since the return to democracy — a battleground where the opposition has promised a united front through the Ibadan Declaration, and the ruling APC has moved with accelerated urgency, its presidential primary now slated for 23 May. For federal lawmakers, the stakes are as personal as they are political. The party primaries they are heading home to contest are not merely exercises in internal democracy; they are survival trials, where governors — not presidents — hold the keys to nomination.
The Villa Meeting That Changed Everything
The tensions underpinning this year's adjournment were laid bare in a dramatic, closed-door meeting at the Presidential Villa on 23 April — just days before Akpabio announced the plenary suspension. According to an exclusive report by The Podium Media, the extended Senate leadership, led by Akpabio, made a last-ditch, closed-door appeal to President Bola Tinubu, seeking guarantees of automatic return tickets for the 2027 elections. Tinubu listened — and then, by multiple accounts, delivered a blunt refusal. "Go home, work with your governor, and prove your popularity. The ticket will not be handed to you on a platter in Aso Rock," the President was quoted as telling the senators.
A ranking National Assembly source, briefed on the meeting's minutes, told The Podium Media: "The visit was a mission. They went in there to plead for a lifeline, for assurance that sitting senators would be shielded from the brutal primaries ahead. They made a compelling case for continuity and legislative experience. They argued that throwing all of them into a fresh primary battle would destabilize the upper chamber. But the President was unmoved". Three separate officials told the outlet that Tinubu reaffirmed the authority of state governors as the gatekeepers of the APC nomination process, declaring that their influence over party structures in their respective states was "not negotiable".
For senators from the opposition, the dynamic is different: they must navigate factional disputes within their own parties — the PDP remains split between the Turaki and Wike factions; the Labour Party, newly consolidated under Senator Nenadi Usman, must decide whether its presidential ticket goes to Peter Obi or another aspirant; and smaller parties like the ADC, PRP, and Accord are still negotiating coalition terms. But the underlying anxiety — the fear that home is no longer a safe haven, that governors have consolidated power over party structures, and that incumbency is no guarantee of re-election — cuts across party lines.
What Happens Next: The Primary Season at a Glance
With the Senate adjourned from Thursday, the stage shifts decisively from the National Assembly chamber to the constituencies, the party secretariats, and the primary venues where Nigeria's political future will be shaped. INEC's timetable gives parties a window from 23 April to 30 May to conclude their primaries. The APC has scheduled its presidential primary for 23 May and its screening of aspirants from 6 to 9 May. The Wike-aligned PDP faction has set its presidential primary for 17–18 May. The Nenadi Usman-led Labour Party has scheduled its own presidential primary for 23 May.
Some senators are already positioning themselves for battle. On the same day Akpabio announced the suspension, former Senator Shehu Sani — who represented Kaduna Central from 2015 to 2019 — picked up APC nomination forms to return to the upper chamber. Across the states, governors are gauging their preferred successors and assessing which federal lawmakers can be trusted — and which must be replaced. For the senators packing their bags and heading home this week, the message from the Presidency is clear: no one is entitled to a return ticket. Every mandate must be renewed on the same ground where it was first won.
A Journey Home, A Political Test
The Senate's adjournment on Thursday is not a recess — it is a reckoning. For the first time since the 10th National Assembly was inaugurated, federal lawmakers must leave the protective bubble of the National Assembly and face the same local dynamics, the same gubernatorial power brokers, and the same grassroots delegates that will determine whether they return to the Red Chamber in 2027. President Tinubu's directive — "Go home and work with your governor" — has reshaped the terms of engagement. The Senate is not merely taking a break from law-making; it is entering an arena where the law of party primaries, not the law of plenary, will decide its future. The roads out of Abuja are crowded this week — and not all who travel them will return.
Stay tuned to Unuevbo TV for continuing coverage of Nigeria's 2027 elections, party primaries, and the shifting fortunes of the National Assembly.
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