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Barely few days after the victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the just-concluded Presidential and National Assembly election which saw the party winning majority seats in the National Assembly, the battle of which geo-political zone clinches the position of the Senate president in the 8th National Assembly which will be inaugurated by June this year has begun.
According to the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the All Progressives Congress (APC) had won 60 out of 109 seats while the PDP won 49 seats.
Leadership checks indicate that power brokers within the party had intensified lobbying for their preferred candidates for the seat of the number three citizen, thus throwing up many interests, permutations and schemings.
The APC, leadership learnt, had reserved the position of the Senate president for the South East geo-political zone in line with its internal principle of zoning to accommodate the zone in its power distribution.
It was learnt that the inability of the South East geo-political zone to produce a senator from the APC in the March 28 National Assembly election gave room for the altering of the political equation.
The North East and North Central geo-political zones are said to be positioning themselves for the plumb job against the earlier party arrangement which favoured the South East.
Those who are pushing for the position to be re-zoned to the North East geo-political zone had based their argument on the number of votes generated from the zone, arguing that the zone gave the highest number of votes after North West and should be compensated with the position.
Outside the North East, there are also moves from the North Central geo-political zone which had occupied the Senate presidency for eight years under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to be considered for the position. The zone has positioned notable and influential legislators who are eyeing the seat.
A breakdown of the results released by INEC shows that the North West that produced the party’s presidential candidate polled 7,115,199 votes, North East polled 2,848,678 votes, North Central 2,411,013, South West 2,433,193, South-South 428,590 while the South East got 198,248 votes.
A lot of horse-trading is said to be going on within the party hierarchy as interested parties are said to have intensified their lobbying of the leaders of the party who are believed to sway party decisions.
There are apprehensions that what played out in the House of Representatives at the 7th National Assembly where the Yorubas lost out may re-enact itself with the same fate befalling the South East. The PDP which won majority seats then had zoned the speakership to the South West but it was truncated by Hon Aminu Tambuwal from the North West who clinched the position against the party directives.
The South East caucus of the APC, Leadership reliably gathered, is said to be making frantic efforts not to lose the position. There are unconfirmed reports that some PDP senators specifically from Ebonyi State may defect to the APC to enable the zone clinch the position.
In an interview with leadership, a member of the APC Presidential Campaign Committee on Contact and Mobilisation and Kano State gubernatorial aspirant, Alhaji Usman Alhaji, said he believes that the party will play according to its constitution, principle of federal character and geo political spread in its distribution of offices in the next government.
He said “ what is good to geese is also good for the gander, I think that the South East should be encouraged despite their poor showing at the march 28 poll”
But there are concern raised whether the party (APC) will stick to the principle of zoning in electing the principal officers of the senate or will it go by the reality on ground.
Will Settle For Speaker If…
The North-East chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has urged the leadership of the party to either cede the Senate Presidency or the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the region in recognition of its contribution to the party’s victory at the just concluded presidential election.
The North-east zone of the party further argues that it is blessed with abundant talents and qualified candidates for the positions.
A statement signed yesterday in Abuja by the APC national Vice Chairman, North-east, Engr. Babachir David Lawal, also urged the voters in the zone to massively vote for the APC during the governorship and state House of Assembly elections slated for Saturday.
Lawal said: “In recognition of this immense contribution to the party’s victory, I want to seize this opportunity to call on the APC national leadership to cede either the Senate Presidency or Speaker of the House of Representatives to the region where we have an abundance of talents and imminently qualified candidates for these positions. This will set the region on a course of accelerated development that it so desperately needs.
“But for us to reap the full benefits of an APC government at the centre, we must also have the APC in government in the six states in our zone. This will facilitate coordination and planning of development and infrastructure projects that will have to be embarked upon by both tiers of government.
“An opposition government in any of the states will destroy this synergy and put any prospect of our rehabilitation, reconstruction and reconciliation in jeopardy. Therefore, I call on all registered voters in the region to massively come out and cast their votes for the APC on Saturday, April 11, 2015.”
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