Yari challenge APC’s choice of Akpabio, want’s North West Senate Presidency

The opposition to the emergence of the former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Senator Godswill Akpabio, as the preferred candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the position of the next Senate President and Senator Barau Jibrin as his deputy has continued unabated as a former governor of Zamfara State, Abdulaziz Yari, has insisted that the North-west must produce the Senate President.

The ruling party had anointed Jibrin and Hon. Tajudeen Abbas as its preferred candidates for the Deputy Senate President and Speaker of House of Representatives, respectively.

Both Jibrin (APC, Kano), and Abbas (APC, Kaduna) are from the North-west.

Despite the APC leadership’s insistence on its choice of Akpabio, the former Zamfara State governor Yari who is the arrowhead of the opposition by the North-west, has refused to back down on his ambition to challenge Akpabio.

The former Zamfara governor, it was learnt, has been mobilising North-west Senators to reject the two positions allocated to the zone and insist on Senate Presidency so as to head one arm of the government.

Yari, Senators Orji Uzor Kalu and Osita Izunaso had vowed to challenge APC’s anointed candidate.

Izunaso, in particular, insisted that he is the best man for the job, having served in both the Senate and the House of Representatives without any baggage.

However, unlike Yari, whose campaign office at the prestigious Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja has consistently been playing host to both the newly-elected senators and the returning ones, Kalu and Izunaso do not operate from any established campaign offices.

Meanwhile, Some of the North-west senators-elect have insisted that Yari would run for the position of the Senate President. “We in the North-west have discovered that we are being sidelined from the incoming administration of Tinubu because we would not be in control of any arm of government if the APC anointed candidates for the presiding officers’ positions in the 10th National Assembly succeeded.

“For instance, the President, who would head the executive is from the South-west while the judiciary currently has another South-west indigene as the head. There is also, every possibility that the person who would succeed him is from the Southern part of the country.

“If we allow the current zoning arrangements of the APC to stand, it means that the nation’s legislature would be in the firm control of another southerner.

Buhari had on Thursday, during the inauguration of the permanent site of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS) in Abuja laid emphasis on the need for the lawmakers to be truly independent and be able to elect their leaders without executive interference.

And with the expected inauguration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the President on Monday, some senators-elect have advised him to address the sharing of the National Assembly presiding offices crisis to the extent that the North-west concedes one presiding office to the North-central.

The senators-elect said after their meeting Thursday in Abuja that it would be against the spirit of equity to allow a zone to occupy two offices of the presiding offices when the other has none.

The senators-elect advised that Tinubu should avoid inheriting another crisis like what happened in 2015 when the All Progressives Congress (APC) lost the Senate presidency and the office of the speaker due to internal squabbles.

According to one of the senators-elect, “We intend to meet Tinubu as President, once he is sworn in between Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss with him this time as the President and Commander-in-Chief.

“He is the President and he should not start off with agitation and crisis or allow the National Assembly to slip out of his control. If he allows himself to be deceived, then, it means that he will inherit the crisis,” the senator-elect stated.

The senators-elect mostly from the North-central explained that it is expected that the North-west be allowed to choose from the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the deputy senate president.

According to the senator-elect, “Senator Jubrin Barau from Kano State and Hon Abbas Tajudeen from Kaduna have been micro-zoned for the offices, without considering the North-central that also contributed substantially to the victory of the APC. For equity, we expect that one of the presiding offices should go to the North-central.”