There are intrigues as ranking senators of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) jostling for the seat of Senate majority leader are intensifying lobby for the position.
The Senate is billed to resume sitting on July 4, after which all the eight principal positions will be filled by both the ruling APC and minority parties.
The positions of Senate Leader, Deputy Senate Leader, Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip are reserved for APC, which has the majority seats in the Red Chamber.
The remaining four are reserved for the minority parties. They are Minority Leader, Deputy Minority Leader, Minority Whip and Deputy Minority Whip.
Though the leaderships of various political parties play a major role in the selection process, the jostle for the majority and minority leadership seats is said to be causing ripples among senators of both APC and PDP, the two parties with majority of seats in the parliament.
In the 10th Senate, the APC has 59 senators; PDP, 36; LP, 8; SDP, 2; NNPP, 2; YPP, 1; and APGA, 1.
Lawmakers from the opposition caucus had said they were aware of moves by forces inside and outside the Senate to foist a compromised minority leadership on them. They, however, vowed that the plot would be resisted.
Like the minority caucus, the jostle for the Senate majority leadership seat appears to be creating uneasy calm among APC senators eyeing the seat.
Senators Ali Ndume (APC, Borno) and Michael Opeyemi Bamidele (APC, Ekiti) are said to be the major contenders for the position. The duo were among the arrowheads of Godswill Akpabio's campaign for Senate presidency.
Ndume served as the Director General of Akpabio's campaign while Bamidele was the deputy.
APC senators from the North said the push by some South West lawmakers to produce a majority leader will cause further disquiet in the Senate after the South had produced Senate president.
One of them, who preferred not to be named, said lawmakers from the Northern region are already feeling marginalised.
He urged the party's leadership to address the imbalance in the Senate, saying the acrimony the Senate presidency contest caused among lawmakers was yet to disappear.
He said, "Now, I learnt that they are pushing for Opeyemi Bamidele to be Senate Leader. Bamidele is a junior senator who can't hold the Red Chamber together during any crisis. We know the director of Akpabio's campaign.
"When Ahmad Lawan campaigned and he became the Senate president, it was the Director General of his campaign organisation, Abdullahi Yahaya, that became the Senate Leader.
"When Ndume led the campaign for Saraki, he became the Senate Leader. When Ndoma Egba was made the campaign coordinator for David Mark, it was why he insisted that he should be the Senate Leader.
"Now, they say they want to make the deputy campaign coordinator the Senate Leader. Even himself should not have started all these. Bamidele has never been in the leadership. Ndume was a minority leader. He was a Senate leader. He led the campaign for Akpabio and he is older than Bamidele in the National Assembly."
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Meanwhile, some senators have knocked Akpabio over the appointment of his Chief of Staff and his deputy, who are both from the South.
An aggrieved senator said the appointment was a departure from the existing practice, where the Chief of Staff to the President of the Senate and the deputy are chosen from the North and South and also reflect the two faiths - Christianity and Islam.
"How can he appoint a Chief of Staff and deputy all from the South? The deputy should be from the North. He is creating problems for himself. If he had sought my advice, he would have taken his Chief of Staff from the South and deputy from the North," the lawmaker said.
