10th NASS: APC Defends Zoning, Cites Equity, Inclusion

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has defended its choice for principal positions of the 10th National Assembly (NASS).

The party said the preferred people to occupy the offices which was ratified at its National Working Committee (NWC) meeting in Abuja, was based on the principle of equity, inclusion, and national interest.

APC national publicity secretary, Felix Morka, who stated this yesterday on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme, said his party consulted with the greater majority of the National Assembly members-elect before the announcement.

Morka who defended the party’s choice of Senator Godswill Akpabio as the Senate president ahead of the inauguration of the 10th National Assembly in June said the South-South zone which Akpabio represents has not produced a Senate president since the beginning of the Fourth Republic in 1999.

According to him, “I am from the South-South and I don’t see why the South-South is ineligible for consideration. After all, no Senate president has come from that region since 1999, since this dispensation.

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“We haven’t had that. Other regions have had some representations. The South East for instance, five of them held that position from the region. That does not mean that the South East is ineligible or unfit to produce the Senate president; every region of this country can.

“But there is something else that we are concerned about; it’s called national interest, it’s called equity, it’s called inclusion, it’s called a sense of ownership,” he said.

Morka stressed that the party looked at some very solid parameters and ensured that every region gets a fair share.

The APC NWC had on Monday zoned the leadership of the 10th National Assembly.

The party organ zoned the Senate president to the South-South, Senator Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom); deputy Senate president to the North West, Senator Barau Jubrin (Kano).

Others are the speaker of the House of Representatives (North West) – Abass Tajudeen (Kaduna), deputy speaker South East – Ben Kalu (Abia).

He said the decision of the NWC was just a guidance ahead of the election of the principal officers of the 10th National Assembly next month and not cast in stone.