8th NASS: Senate President Should Go to N’ East – Sen. Bukar

The senator representing Yobe East Senatorial District in the Red Chamber, Senator Ibrahim Abba Bukar, has said it would be unfair if the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) eventually decided to accept a recommendation zoning the seat of the Senate President to North Central and the speakership position of the House of Representatives to South-West in the eighth National Assembly.

Speaking in an interview in Abuja, Bukar, a former governor of Yobe State, who was elected for the third time into the Senate in the 2015 general election, said that the proper thing to do was to zone the Senate Presidency or Speakership of the House of Reps to the North-East, as against the Deputy Senate President seat proposed for the region.

According to him: “This first step so far taken is a wrong step. The Segun Oni adhoc committee has made recommendation to the leadership of the party. The recommendation is totally wrong, biased and heavily lopsided. I hope Mr. President-elect will do something about it. Of course, whatever anybody says, whatever the party says, whatever the President-elect says, at the end of day it is the members of the National Assembly who are going to elect their leaders. So, I just hope this first step is corrected. It is wrong for this committee to recommend that North Central which has produced four different Senate Presidents in this country should continue to produce another Senate President, while the North-East has never ever produced a Senate President; never ever produced a Speaker. The highest we have ever held was the Deputy Speaker.”

He added that: “The South-West which has the Vice- President is again given the speakership. This is very, very unfair. This is a continuous marginalisation of the North-East which we have been fighting against. The continuous marginalization and neglect of the North-East has always been our bane.”