National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole says the party will accommodate all regions in the country in the zoning of leadership positions in the incoming 9th Assembly, Igbere TV can report.
Igbere TV reports that Oshiomhole made the assertion on Monday while addressing APC House of Representative members elect.
He was apparently referring to the recent moves by power brokers in the incoming 9th Assembly to cling on to the various leadership positions even while the party is yet to announce its zoning formula.
The APC National Chairman said the ruling party is already working out strategies to ensure that what happened in 2015 where the opposition “hijacked” the leadership positions does not repeat itself.
While calling on the legislators to put away practices capable of dividing them as regards the constitution of the house leadership, Oshiomhole maintained that the APC was already consulting with various stakeholders to come up with the zoning arrangement.
He said, “Please, don’t allow anybody to divide you. We shall carry out extensive consultations with Buhari and other leaders of the party to harmonise issues and, work out a sensible zoning formula that seek to carry everybody along.”
The former Labour Leader said the party would not share critical positions in the National Assembly with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), adding that the ruling party has the majority elected members to emerge unchallenged.
Oshiomhole said, “We shall not again share any of the critical positions in the leadership of the House ofRepresentatives with the opposition PDP including chairmanship of sensitive committees.
“Before the election, we had about 190 members. As we speak, Nigerians have re-elected 223 more members on the platform of the APC.
“We have overwhelming majority even if we want to amend the constitution.
“I’m happy to say that in the same token, the Nigerian people have expressed less confidence in the opposition PDP.
“For us to enjoy our numerical strength, we should recognise we were elected by the party’s platform.
“APC will nominate the right candidates to occupy the speaker, deputy speaker, leader, Chief whip, deputy chief whip and others. However, we shall only allow the opposition to occupy the Minority leader and chairmanship of the public accounts committee as provided by the constitution.
“Our challenge is to have a leadership of the House of Representatives that will share the same vision with the executive.
“We are one family as shown in our broom. We have the number and we will use the number to elect the leaders we want.”
Reacting, some of the newly-elected lawmakers, who spoke on behalf of their colleagues, pledged their unalloyed loyalty to the leadership of the party in the discharge of their legislative duties.
Igbere TV reports that the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Monday brainstormed with the party’s newly elected members of the House of Representatives to ensure it occupies critical leadership position in incoming 9th Assembly.
