10th NASS: APC beats retract to avoid crisis

..as Senate President, Speakership, protest party’s choices

By Tom Okpe

As protests of aspirants for the Senate President and House of Representatives speaker in the 10th Assembly, NASS against the choice of Godswill Akpabio and Tajudeeen Abass for the positions rages, the All Progressives Congress, (APC) said it will go back to the drawing board, to do the needful.

The APC National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, said this when he received some aggrieved Senate President aspirants, including Abdullaziz Yari, (Zamfara); Orji Kalu, (Abia); and Sani Musa, (Niger) to the party’s National Secretariat, Buhari House, Abuja on Thursday.

The aspirants who said one of them, Osita Izunaso, (Imo) was unavoidably absent due to official engagements came barely 24 hours after some speakership aspirants protested to the national secretariat over the choice of Abass.

The aggrieved speakership contenders were the deputy speaker, Idris-Wase; Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Muktar Betara, Yusuf Gagdi, (Plateau), Miriam Onuoha, (Imo), Sada Soli, (Katsina) and Sani Jaji, (Zamfara).

Responding to Yari, Kalu and Musa, Adamu took the responsibility for the zoning list announced earlier by the party, saying it was put together without adequate consultations due to the challenges the party was facing after the election.

The APC chairman urged the aspirants to ceasefire and wait for the final outcome of another meeting when Bola Tinubu, the president-elect returns to the country, assuring that consultations would be enlarged to accommodate more views.

He said: “As chairman of the APC, I take responsibility for what has gone on air. I take absolute responsibility for that. Yes there was no sufficient or adequate consultations with you who are contesting and it is simple principle of democracy that you get views and opinions. But, the circumstances that we found ourselves in after the elections frustrated our desire.

“We will go back to the drawing board. We owe our party that duty to take a look whether what was done can not be changed; what was done needs some changes or reviews.

“Hold the fire until the last word is heard from us. We are the custodians of the party as NWC but we are not acting alone. The voice of the president-elect is an essential voice. We must accommodate him, the best we can. I will not compromise on that.

“So, he is right now outside the country and by the grace of God when he comes back we will go back to the drawing board and put ours heads together again and see what we will get.

“I cannot preempt that, I will wait until we hold that meeting with Mr president-elect, the same team that we had the same meeting with. If we need to enlarge the committee we will do so we will better informed through contributions that we will be made.”

Adamu also said the agitation of the North-central geopolitical zone for reward having voted massively for the party was genuine and would like looked into adding that votes were very important in a partisan democracy.

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“On the issue of the north-central, I remain tongue tied talking about north-central. Your argument is extremely plausible. I assure you, we will take a look at it along what has been given to the public.

“I don’t want to believe that vote is not essential thing. Vote remains the essential thing in every democracy because vote is the opinion of the populace,” the former Nasarawa state governor said.

Leader of the delegation, Yari
who presented a letter conveying their grievances to the APC national chairman that they were not satisfied with the party’s choice for the senate presidency office.

He said if the party’s zoning of the presiding officer of the Senate is not review or reversed to give consideration to the North-west which gave APC the highest vote to produce president, the people will turn away from it in 2027.

The former Zamfara governor warned that APC would lost the Senate Presidency if it insists on maintaining its anointed candidate for the plum job.

“Now if you look at the calculation of what we have in the Senate is not a magic we are thinking of because if care is not taking if we play the way you presented to us is not acceptable. Opposition do the nomination and they have their way which is going to be another problem to us.

“So Mr. chairman we are not undermining what you are doing but we are doing this for the sake of this party to grow and we are doing for the best interest of the party because where we are talking today, if we from the north take another decision, it will not be good to all of us and it will become history which we don’t want that to happen.

“Only if we do justice that will protect that from happening but we should all pick our pen today and write it which is 11th May. Anything from the contrary walahi (I swear) the Northern Nigeria will rake another decision,” he said.

Also speaking, Kalu said the zoning formular was undemocratic and unconstitutional it put people’s names, stress that they were going to challenge it.

“We are going to say no. I am a party man and we have never disobeyed this party but this is the first time that we are going to say no on the floor of the senate. The party should go back to the drawing board and rezone, not by name but by zones.

“You people have done it before and we will do what you have done in the past. So, it is better, we settle properly as 59 senators of the APC. The difference is not much. If you count three or four of us out, you are losing votes already and we have the capacity to get more from the other side and from our colleagues in the party,” he said.

While making case for the South-east in race for National Assembly leadership positions, he said: “Vote is not a measurement. We had a hurricane in our zone. We need one another and not the level of votes cast. Those who did not vote for the party today can vote for the party tomorrow if they are properly aligned.

“After all we have made progress. Before we used to be one or two senators but it is no longer so. This thing did not only happen in the Southeast. Many people from areas where the presidential candidates came from, voted along certain lines. I appeal to you people that you must cede something very reasonable to the South East.

“What happened is that there was a presidential candidate from the southeast and the entire people of the area decided in a certain direction because if we look at the election, it was not only in the Southeast that thing happened, that every part of the country had problem of voting.”

On his part, Musa expressed dissatisfaction with the zoning arrangement, especially as it did not favour the North-central despite its huge contribution to the party’s success.

“Our geographical settings have become like institutions. You cannot give positions to individuals.

“I would have expected my brothers from the northwest to stand against this template and say let us toe the line we have been towing since 1999. This injustice needs to be corrected.

“This injustice, we need to correct it. We have six geopolitical zones. The president is from southwest, we have vice president for northeast. We have the office of Senate President, Deputy Senate President Speaker and Deputy Speaker. It is only fair to throw this out to the other four geopolitical zones,” he said.