Recently, the move by senators to unseat the Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, resonated in Ebonyi State, where President Olusegun Obasanjo who was on a visit to the state canvassed a belated support for the embattled Anyim and called on senators to let him be. President Obasanjo's call was a tacit acknowledgment that the centre can no longer hold for the Senate President whose grip on power appears tenuous.

The implication is that before long, there may be another change in the leadership of the upper legislative arm. While the senators reserve the right to choose their leaders, the frequency of these leadership changes is becoming very embarrassing.

It is particularly so for people of the South East who are made to appear incapable or unfit to occupy high political offices. Is it not regrettable that it is the Senate Presidency zoned to the Igbo that has become the most unstable, producing three Senate Presidents in 18 months as if there is no one from that part of the country who can provide enduring leadership to the Senate.

Indeed, the impression being created is that the Igbo are incapable or unqualified to occupy responsible political offices. But this has no empirical support.

For whatever it is worth, President Obasanjo can not absolve himself from the problem in which the Senate has found itself. In matters affecting the Igbo nation, President Obasanjo has shown a great hatred for them which explains why he has refused to give the Igbo their due in Nigeria.

Maybe because he has his eyes on re-election, President Obasanjo has refused to work with the Igbo first eleven, comprising the best and brightest individuals the Igbo nation can offer. Rather, he prefers to choose leaders for the Igbo, in his own image, people who can neither articulate the Igbo interest nor challenge him to give the South East zone its due from the national patrimony.

These are the people he wants to work with, people who can best be described as intellectual Lilliputians. Among the first eleven Igbo politicians Obasanjo has relegated to the back waters are Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Chuba Okadigbo, Orji Uzor Kalu, Herbert Orji and a host of others.

It is no longer news that shortly after Ekwueme galvanized support for Obasanjo to win the South-east votes in the presidential election, he jettisoned Ekwueme, alienating him from the mainstream of events in his government. In the case of Okadigbo, Obasanjo's interest in seeing to his downfall was undisguised, and when he was subsequently removed from office, Obasanjo was happier for it.

Orji Kalu's frustration with Obasanjo has to do with the fact that this energetic young man gave his all and campaigned for Obasanjo. No sooner was Obasanjo sworn -in than he forgot all the promises he made to the area, even after staking all Kalu had to ensure his victory.

Last February, Obasanjo paid a state visit to Abia State and said that the abandoned Aba -Umuahia expressway would be rehabilitated, but till date the road has remained a death trap. Herbert Orji, who played a pivotal role in Obasanjo's election, has equally been given a back seat by the man he helped into office.

But these are men with strength of character to advance the Igbo cause, particularly in a country where ethnic fervour is on the upsurge. Therefore, if after only four months it is that Anyim, who was touted as the best material for the job in whom the President is well pleased, is now having problems of acceptability and competence among his colleagues, what can one make out of it? It means that disillusionment has set in and that senators might have been misled into believing that every problem between the executive and the legislature would be over with Anyim on the saddle.

Under Anyim, Obasanjo said that the relationship between the executive and the legislature had been excellent, but what he did not say was the relationship was an unequal one based on a master- servant relationship in which the Senate leadership is subservient to the executive. This incidentally is drawing the ire of the lawmakers.

But the Senate is not just about executive-legislative relationship. There is also the issue of the "Senate's personality" which is embodied in the head of that institution.

The tragedy of the Senate today is that senators do not know what they want and because of this, the office of the Senate President has become a musical chair. And the Igbo are getting the heat for the simple reason that by the way it has been configured, every Igbo senator sees himself as a potential Senate President because there seem to be no rallying point or an overall Igbo interest.

The writer wrote in from Lagos