The All Progressives Congress’s (APC) National Working Committee, NWC, will declare a free election for the top positions in the tenth National Assembly, barring any last-minute changes.
Campaigns for key presiding officer positions have become more intense in anticipation of the 10th National Assembly’s June 13, 2023, inauguration.
The speaker of the House of Representatives was assigned to the North-West by the APC, while the Senate presidency was zoned to the South-South.
Both Senator Jibrin Barau and Senator Godswill Akpabio were named as the next Deputy Senate Presidents in the 10th Parliament, respectively.
The party designated Tajudeen Abbas, a lawmaker from Kaduna, as the speaker of the House of Representatives, while Ben Kalu, a representative-elect from the South East, won the position of deputy speaker.
The APC zoning, however, caused lawmakers-elect who had announced their desire to run to react angrily.
Information gathered from multiple sources shows that following the APC NWC’s suspicions, its proposed zoning may be thwarted, it is, however, recommending that the contest be thrown open.
“It appears the NWC is suspicious that their agenda may not go as planned, and that is why they are recommending a free contest,” a source revealed.
”Secretly, they have recommended a free contest because they (NWC) have intelligence that the G-6 aspirants have already adopted a consensus candidate among themselves, but they have not revealed the identity of that person.
The G-6 aspirants are confusing the party; the Gbaja boys are also confused because they don’t know who they are throwing up, ” he added.
It was also learned that the G-6 speakership aspirants might have settled on picking a deputy speaker from the South-South geo-political zone.
“Secondly, they have concrete information that the G-6 is going to the South-South to pick their deputy,” the source said.
“There are issues, and they need to be confronted because the more we delay in solving the issues once and for all, the more we keep on having fresh ones.
“For instance, we have credible intelligence that the aggrieved aspirants who have formed the G-6 are already in an alliance with the opposition parties.
“Initially, we thought it was not going to work, but we gathered credible information that they swore to themselves not to betray one another and went ahead to concede the deputy speakership slot to the opposition parties.
“We first considered it an act of indiscipline and anti-party but on second thought, we needed to be smart to throw the contest open to all aspirants. Whoever wins at every point is, after all, a party man.
“Some suggested that they should be sanctioned, but we looked at the bigger picture because we must learn from our experience as party administrators. What are the consequences for those aspirants? And what are the consequences for the party as a whole?
“So, the message the party chairman gave to Senator Akpabio and his team when they visited was a coded message. It is left for them to decode it because it is difficult to do another rejoinder to repudiate what we had said earlier on zoning.
“More importantly, our initial thought was that the aggrieved aspirants would quickly adopt someone amongst them, but they are also smart enough not to do so for now.
“That keeps the suspense high, and it will be risky to allow them to do the damage by allying with the opposition parties swiftly on the floor of the parliament that day.
“Of course, we know too well that most of the people milling around Akpabio or Abbas are playing politics. So, what is the guarantee that all are with us?
“So we have decided to slow down and lower our tone on streamlining to individuals; let all those interested come out to contest because if we don’t allow that to happen, the ganging up of the aggrieved APC aspirants and the opposition will be too risky for us”, a lawmaker-elect explained.