As APC North-West senators split on Saraki, Lawan for Senate President

By Levinus Nwabughiogu

ABUJA—A major test for the All Progressives Congress, APC, was unfolding last night, as canvassers for a major contender for Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, were setting machinery to defy proposals by the party’s governors on the zoning of the office.

The development came as members of the Northwest caucus of the party split on the candidatures of the two leading contenders for the presidency of the Senate, Senators Ahmad Lawan from Yobe State and Bukola Saraki from Kwara State.

Dogara was at press time in a meeting with scores of members-elect who have identified with his aspiration to be speaker of the House. The momentum for Dogara was despite the fact that the party’s governors had last week reached an agreement that the speaker should be zoned to the Southwest and the Senate President be zoned to the North-Central.

The report of the governors was passed on to the president-elect, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, who according to multiple sources, accepted the recommendation on the basis that the proposal should not in any way impede the popular choice of the lawmakers. Those behind Dogara it was learnt yesterday were working on the basis that the party would give heed to the desire of the majority of members and avoid the Tambuwal effect as happened in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in 2011.

Besides Dogara, others in contention for the speaker position in the 8th House are the incumbent minority leader, Femi Gbajabimila from Lagos State, Abdulmumin Jibrin from Kano State, Tahir Moguno from Borno State and Pally Iriase from Edo State.

A joint press conference scheduled to announce a collaboration between Gbajabimila and Jibrin in the leadership contest was twice cancelled yesterday after both men reportedly failed to address knotty issues that arose after a tentative agreement on Sunday night.

Vanguard gathered that the meeting taking place at the Nigerian Air Force, NAF, Conference Center, Abuja was called to fine-tune strategies of reaching out to more members-elect besides the 143 that had already signed up for the Dogara project.

A source who spoke to Vanguard in confidence said that the meeting was evaluating strategies already in place to realise the success of Dogara in the leadership contest.

On the issue of zoning, a source in the camp disclosed that they had passed the point of zoning, saying that no one was talking about zoning anymore.

“Zoning is as good as dead in APC. General Mohammadu Buhari went through the hurdles of primaries with other contestants, later emerged winner, campaigned and won the general elections to become the president-elect,” a source confided last night.

“Besides, the body language of the General and even the leadership of the party has always been to give free hand to the members to choose their own leaders. So, it is obviously what everyone is doing now.

“Let anyone who has the capacity to win the support of the members both old and new emerge as the next speaker. Hon. Femi Gbajabimila is in the race with Dogara. That is normal. But I can tell you that Dogara would win at the end of the day.

“But that is not to say that Gbaja is not qualified but they are essentially looking at a candidate that would be seen as their own.