All Progressives Congress (APC), appears to have zoned the positions of Senate President and Deputy Senate President, to the South-South geopolitical zone and North-West geo-political zone respectively, Vanguard Newspaper reported.
The newspaper reported that although the party is yet to come up with an official position on the zoning of 10th National Assembly leadership slots, a top source in the party, who is also in Aso Rock, hinted that the South-South zone may get the Senate President’s position.
However, the source who spoke to Vanguard’s correspondent under the condition of anonymity said that, Senator Godswill Akpabio and Senator Barau Jibrin, have been tipped to occupy the positions.
He claimed that top party leaders in the party, are rooting for Senators Godswill Akpabio and Barau Jibrin from Akwa Ibom and Kano states for the positions of Senate President and Deputy Senate President respectively.
According to him, “We are not even bothered much about where the Speaker of the House of Representatives would go because, the bigger issue has to be sorted out before any other one; and the bigger issue is that of the Senate President and once that is sorted out, others will automatically sort out naturally. In a meeting we had recently, we already chose our President and Deputy except Tinubu disagrees with it.
Speaking further, he said among the contenders, they have seen very competent hands and trust worthy persons who share in the vision of the incoming administration and apart from that, they were also looking at the state performances as well as party loyalty.
He said, “Quite honestly, we have been on this matter for weeks and we have been making informal consultations across board, including those outside our party. We will present the zoning suggestions in respect of Senate alone, to the president-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and we will discuss others subsequently.”
The source also claimed that if not for some obvious reasons of balancing, North-West geopolitical zone, particularly, Senator Barau Jibrin, would have been a perfect fit for the presidency position.
But, they have to bend backwards and appeal to him and the zone to allow the South-South geopolitical zone to take the shot while they beef up the seat with Jibrin adoption as the Deputy Senate president and it is not a question of guessing who could be, we all know Akpabio is the only ranking senator that could be considered from the South-South zone.”
