The All Progressives Congress, APC, has not taken decision on the zoning and election of principal officers of the National Assembly, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila has said.
Gbajabiamila stated this on Monday while speaking with the media after the meeting between the leadership of the party and members elected into the National Assembly this year.
“On the issue of zoning; yes, we did talk about it. It’s neither here nor there yet. We have another election coming up this weekend and we want to make sure that everybody goes back home, roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty.
“It’s not hurray yet. We are not there yet. We need to complete the victory and our joy, so to speak, before we talk about the National Assembly.”
He also explained that the inability of the party to decide on the issue of zoning had nothing to do with the absence of the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, at the meeting.
“If the president-elect was here, there was going to be no difference. The question about zoning was that let’s tarry a while; let’s leave everything for now until we finish the election,” Gbajabiamila stated.
He said the meeting was held to bring members-elect of both the Senate and the House of Representatives together and to celebrate the party’s victory.
National Assembly Government
The Senator representing Borno South, Ali Ndume, who was also at the meeting, said the next government in Nigeria would be a National Assembly government because of the experience of the president-elect and his deputy in legislative matters.
According to him, this would ensure a cordial relationship between the executive and the legislature in the incoming government in Nigeria.
“The president-elect is a parliamentarian; he has more experience than most of us, and coincidentally, the Nigerian government is going to be National Assembly government.
The president-elect was a senator; the vice president-elect was a senator; the party chairman was a senator; the secretary of the party was a senator. I believe that this time around we are going to have a rancor-free relationship.”
Elections Postmortem
Ndume said that the meeting was convened for the party leadership to do a postmortem on the Presidential and National Assembly elections held on the 25th of February.
“Essentially, we said we should do a postmortem of our performance and go back to home and ensure that we take the victory to the end.
“Nigerians have spoken; they have decided to elect APC; and we have some ups and downs as usual in every electoral process.
“And the party, as expected also, appealed to the members of the National Assembly-elect to play down on the leadership issues and concentrate so that we take the election battle to the end; and that is to ensure that we win our states; and that is exactly what we are doing.
“The party has already strengthened us and we agreed that interactions like this should be frequent so that we will be going in the same direction instead of having issues by the experience of 2015 and 2019 to some extent.
However, Ndume insisted that “the members of the National Assembly should produce their leadership based on who they think is the best.”
He said that the members of the National Assembly would consider justice, fairness and equity in electing the principal officers.
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