N’Assembly leadership: Tinubu’s meeting with lawmakers fails to resolve zoning crisis

PUNCH

•President called for zoning, failed to name anointed aspirants – Sources

•Opposition parties claim majority, plot to use number against APC candidates

Five days to the inauguration of the 10th National Assembly, President Bola Tinubu’s meetings with lawmakers-elect failed to resolve the crisis over the All Progressives Congress zoning arrangement.

The APC National Working Committee had micro-zoned the Senate President and the Deputy Senate President seats to Senator Godswill Akpabio from South-South and Senator Jibrin Barau from North-West, respectively.

But other aspirants like Senators Abdulaziz Yari, (Zamfara West); Osita Izunaso (Imo West) and Orji Kalu (Abia North) have insisted that they would not step down for the party’s consensus candidate.

In the House, the APC leadership had also endorsed the member-elect representing Kaduna (North-West), Tajudeen Abbas, as speakership candidate, while the member-elect from Abia State (South-East), Benjamin Kalu, clinched the Deputy Speaker slot.

The aspirants, who were among the lawmakers who held a meeting with the President at the Aso Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday night, were still lobbying their colleagues and strategising to upturn the APC’s zoning arrangement for the NASSS principal positions as of Thursday.

This is happening as the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party have concluded plans to frustrate the APC’s plan for the NASS leadership offices.

The PDP confirmed on Thursday it had entered an agreement with other opposition parties to leverage on their numbers in influencing the election of the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Findings by The PUNCH indicated that at least two members of the G-7, a group of anti-zoning aspirants for the speaker position, might contest against Abbas.