10TH NASS: Group Urges Equity, Fairness and Justice on APCs Zoning
Legislative Correspondent
The National Consultative Coalition has called on the All Progressive Congress (APC), to apply Equity, Fairness and Justice in the zoning of the 10th National Assembly Leadership position.
The group made the call in a press briefing on Thursday at Abuja. While warning the party against disintegration. A statement made available by the Spokesperson, Dr David Israel reads in full:
NATIONAL CONSULTATIVE
COALITION ON 10TH NASS
PRESS CONFERENCE
APCS Zoning of 10th NASS Leadership: A Call for Equity, Fairness and Justice
1. Distinguished gucsts.ladies and gentlemen. the Citizens Consultative Coalition highly appreciates your august presence in this auspicious occasion.The collective amnesia of Nigeria’s Political elites is Asad commentary on the arrogance and impudent impunity of these power brokers. They are akin to movers and shakers of the French empire that suffered a historic disrepute, who were said to ” have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.”How else can one begin to fathom the capricious, obnoxious, pernicious and anxious micro zoning of principal officers of the National Assembly by the ruling All Progressives Congress, where a selected few were hand-picked and anointed without due consultations?
2. It simply defies logic that the leadership of the ruling party which had in 2015 seduced the long-suffering masses with its “change”mantra, is all out to break the numerus bad records of its predessor.We are all living witnesses to the machinations of despicable puppeteers who had imposed and deposed party leaders and principal officers of the National Assembly to massage their egos and satiate their sinister whims and caprices. APC has now upped the ante by the insensitive, skewed and provocative micro zoning of the highly strategic principal offices of the National Assembly. The glaring and undue relegation of the North-Central and South-East Geopolitical zones is by any stretch of their imagination, most repugnant to equity, natural justice and good conscience.
3. A party that has at its helms a bonafide north central indigene decided to tongue-in-check occlude and obfuscate the same old faithful zone by the non-inclusion of anyone of its eminently qualified legislators for the plum offices of the federal legislature. All the more infuriating is the fact the fact that the same North-Central geopolitical zone has delivered four out of five gubernatorial tickets contested in the March 18th, 2023 elections. Benue, Nasarawa, Kwara and Niger States have all elected APC gubernatorial candidates in addition to scores of Federal and State legislators. Additionally, Kogi State also in the North Central geopolitical zone, has been governed by the APC since 2015. This crass injustice and arrant ingratitude of the APC is tantamount to biting the same fingers that feeds one and must be resoundingly condemned by all well-meaning patriots without equivocation.
4. It is also conventional political wisdom to extend the olive branch to the constituencies that are hostile in order to ingratiate them by giving them a sense of belonging.The Southeast geopolitical zone had been a bastion of opposition to the APC in its formative years but not anymore in the current scheme of things Against all odds.the APC has made impressive inroads into the zone and is presently in control of the governments in Ebonyi and Imo, two out of the five States in the region. The South East zone has also increased APC legislators in both geometric and arithmetic proportions in the last election.One would have thought that the APC would recognize and amply reward the incremental loyalty of the region by considering the zone for a principal position in the incoming NASS, over and above a glorified second fiddle.
5. It is obvious that the protagonist, proponents and agents provocateurs of this shambolic power sharing are pitiably playing the outrageous otrich which assumes its gargantuan torso is invisible simply because it is hiding its little head in the sand.The widespread dissent by sitting and incoming legislators across party lines are clear indications of the fact that APC power brokers failed, neglected and refused to connsult widely prior to the ill- fated, ill-judged and ill-timed decision and the announcement of their choices with arrogant fiat.The North Central governors have joined the fray and expectedly denounced the illegitimate arrangements, just as delegations of aspirants to the principal offices in both Chambers have besieged the party secretariat to register their disapprobation of the tyrannical party allocation of positions. It is however worthy of note that the party’s national chairman has confessed to the protesting legislators that the party leadership arrived at their unpopular and unjust decision without wide ranging consultation with relevant stakeholders.
6. It is said that a problem is half solved,if it is accurately defined and this should be instructive to the forces that are propelling the undesirable and unpopular aspirants to the leadership of the 10th NASS.It was Robert Nester Marley, the undisputed reggae maestro who sang “if you know your history, then you will know where you are coming from.Then you wouldn’t have to ask me, who the hell do l think I am?”. It is also instructive that the beginning of the end of PDP’s avowal to rule and reign for over a 16 years was the revoIt of its members in the House of Representatives against the imposition of a speaker in 2011.
7. APC should also be reminded of the 2015 imbroglio where their anointed candidates were roundly and soundly routed by the contrived marriage of convenience between its aggrieved members and the opportunistic opposition. That sad turn of events may well be a dress rehearsal for a far worse catastrophic and cataclysmic misadventure for the ruling party.
8. We hereby wish to sound a note of caution to the APC to desist and rescind its preposterous decision or be ready to face the mother of all disintegration, decimation and self-destruction.
Thank You.
