APC chairman accused of seeking to frustrate National Assembly leadership zoning formula

ALL Progressives Congress (APC) chairman Senator Abdullahi Adamu has been accused of working with a group of northern hardliners to frustrate the zoning formula adopted by the party's national working committee (NWC) regarding National Assembly leadership positions.

Earlier this month, President Bola Tinubu was involved in a series of meetings with members of both houses of the National Assembly, where 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 was picked as his deputy.  However, according to Salihu Mohammad Lukman, the APC's national vice chairman, northwest, Senator Adamu and a conservative bloc in the party leadership are spewing up hardcore ethnic northern arguments against the zoning decisions approved by the NWC.

Mr Lukman said: “As if those consultations were not designed to produce agreements, once the NWC approved the recommendation for zoning the leadership of the 10th National Assembly, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, instead of acting as the national chairman, facilitating implementation of decisions of organs of the party, he is acting as a factional leader opposing the decision of the NWC. Instead of working for the success of the decision of the NWC through activating meetings of higher organs of the party to confer more legitimacy to the decision, he seems to be more interested in ensuring that the 2015 model of rebellious leadership emerge in the 10th National Assembly.”

According to Mr Lukman, the biggest challenge for APC of concluding the transition into the new era of President Tinubu is whether the vision of producing a progressive party managing progressive governance initiatives will be produced. He said to have a progressive party requires dynamism, action and improvement both in the management of the APC and the governments it produced.