APC to back down on National Assembly zoning plan and give members a free vote

NIGERIA'S ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) appears to backtracking on plans to impose a set of leaders on the National Assembly with signs that it may declare a free contest for principal officers of both the senate and House of Representatives.

Over the last few weeks, president-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has been involved in a series of meetings with members of both houses of the National Assembly, where it appears that the party has agreed on the leaders of the two chambers. Hon Abbas Tajudeen from Kaduna State has been adopted as the speaker of the House of Representatives, with Hon Benjamin Kalu from Abia State named as the party's candidate for deputy speaker.

In the senate, the APC high command has settled for Senator Godswill Akpabio from Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District as the senate president, while Senator Jibrin Barau from Kano North Senatorial District has been picked as his deputy.  This arrangement has given the northwest geo-political zone two juicy positions and the north central zone none, which is causing consternation within the party.

With a furore brewing over the arrangement, the APC's national working committee (NWC) has been forced to say that it will allow a free contest for election into the principal offices of the 10th National Assembly. With party leaders fearful that their proposed zoning plans may be thwarted, they are now recommending that the contest be thrown open.

One party source said: “It appears the NWC is suspicious that their plan may not go as planned and that is why they are recommending a free contest. Secretly, they have recommended a free contest because they have intelligence that the G-6 aspirants have already adopted a consensus candidate among themselves but they have not revealed the identity of that person.

Jilted aspirants who were not consulted when the zoning arrangement was agreed, have formed the G-6 group. According to one source the G-6 speakership aspirants might have settled to pick a deputy speaker from the south-south geo-political zone and are already in an alliance with the opposition parties.

He added: “Initially, we thought it was not going to work but we gathered credible information that they swore to themselves not to betray one another and went ahead to concede the deputy speakership slot to the opposition parties. We first considered it an act of indiscipline and anti-party but on second thoughts, we need to be smart to throw the contest open to all aspirants. Whoever wins at every point is after all a party man.

“Some suggested that they should be sanctioned but we looked at the bigger picture because we must learn from experience as party administrators. What are the consequences for those aspirants and what are those consequences on the party as a whole?

“So, the message the party chairman gave to Senator Akpabio and his team when they visited was a coded message. It is left for them to decode it because it is difficult to do another rejoinder to repudiate what we had said earlier on zoning."