Tinubu’s silence on Speakership zoning causing confusion in APC

The silence of President-elect Bola Tinubu over who becomes the Speaker of the 10^th House of Representatives is causing confusion among members from the All Progressives Congress which has a majority seat in the assembly, National Daily has gathered.

Many believe that for balance, the Senate President will be zoned to the Southeast or South-south, while the speaker will be between Northwest and Northcentral.

Amid lack of clear direction, about 10 members of the APC have declared interest to contest the speakership and have started to campaign across the country.

They include: Sada Soli from Katsina, Deputy Speaker Idris Wase and Yusuf Gagdi from Plateau State, Tajudeen Abass from Kaduna, Ben Kalu from Abia, Ahmed Jaji from Zamfara, Abubakar Makki from Jigawa, Muktar Betara from Borno and Tunji Olawuyi from Kwara States. All the candidates are from the North except for Ben Kalu from Abia State.

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Behind closed doors, the lawmakers have been campaigning with the name of Tinubu, giving the impression that they are the anointed candidate of the president-elect.

Due to the lack of direction, reliable sources argued that APC may struggle to give directives to the members on zoning because many have taken the campaign beyond the stage of stepping down.

In the last one week, Deputy Speaker Idris Wase has visited about three governors, including Nyesom Wike of Rivers, Hope Uzodinma of Imo and Abdulrasaq Abdulrahman of Kwara State, seeking the support of members-elect.

Similarly, another Plateau Lawmaker, Yusuf Gagdi, has been targeting Labour Party strongholds as he has visited Alex Otti, the governor-elect of Abia State and also the Labour Party governorship candidate in Enugu State. This overture is believed to be part of a strategy to get 34 votes of the Labour Party in the House.

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On the other hand, Sada Soli, a lawmaker from Katsina State, is also reaching out to lawmakers from the Northwest in order to present a united front. Although APC in the Northwest is not what it used to be, the region still has numerical strength to get a Senate President or Speaker.

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The arrangement in the Senate will have an effect in the House. If the zone fails to get the Senate president due to the strong call for “a Christian Senate President” then they may see the Speakership as the alternative.

They argued that the minority parties have a combined strength of 163, while the ruling party has 162 members.

One of the conveners of the Minority Caucus meeting was Abdulmumin Jibrin. It would be recalled that Jibrin, a member of the NNPP in Kano State, was involved in the rebellion that disrupted the activities of the ruling party in 2015.

“Fundamental is to see that we bring all the minority parties— which is now known from today as the greater majority— we understand that to pull through our collective interest, to protect our ideals as minority parties that serve as check to the ruling party, to contribute to nation building, we must come together,” he said on Thursday.

The attention has turned to Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila who just returned from France, where he has been with the President-elect, Tinubu. On Thursday, the speaker met with the nine candidates that have officially declared to run for the position.