Follow Us on Google
From Fred Itua, Abuja
Senator-elect from Delta State and a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ned Nwoko, has called for zoning of the senate presidency to the South East.
He said Igbo needed a sense of belonging in the Nigerian enterprise and giving the South East support to occupy the leadership would bring succour to the zone and end the perceived marginalisation in the current Nigeria political set-up.
In the same vein, Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Jibrin Barau, said he was in support of balancing of the leadership of various government offices along regional and religious lines, but stressed that the legislature should be treated differently.
Barau, however, said he would gladly defer to the position of his party if at the end of the campaigns and efforts to win the Senate Presidency, it is zoned to another region.
The two spoke when they met with Nigeria’s leading Parliamentary Advocacy Network (PAN), in Abuja, as part of continued engagement with various leaders and stakeholders across the country ahead of the inauguration of the 10th National Assembly in June.
Osita Izunaso, candidate for Senate president, stressed the need to give all parts of the country a sense of belonging. He said the diversity of the Nigerian nation was such that a lot of consideration ought to be given to various factors in the process of determining who gets what in the allocation of government offices.
He argued that experience, capacity, competence and other considerations such as ethnic and religious balancing must be factored into the leadership selection process in the next National Assembly.
PAN had informed its hosts of its desire to see an independent National Assembly that is capable of being on the side of the people against an overbearing Executive at all times.
The National Coordinator, Sunny Anderson Osiebe, said the group would, in the bid to assess their individual programmes for the legislature, further engage with other legislators-elect, Godswill Akpabio, Orji Uzor Kalu, Governor Dave Umahi and others who have expressed intentions to run for the position of senate president.
