Despite the wide condemnation of the endorsement of Ahmed Lawan for the position of the Senate President by the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, the party has insisted that it is not going back on it’s choice.
APC also declared that there would be no election for the Principal Officers of the 9th National Assembly except the minority leader as the party is going to present consensus candidate and does not need the votes of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party to install National Assembly leadership.
Lanre Issa-Onilu, APC National Publicity Secretary at an interactive session with journalists on Wednesday maintained that the party was not going to share power with the opposition PDP having learnt from the mistake of the 2015.
Issa-Onilu said, “the party in its own judgment believe that we will not only zone, we will go as far as identifying who from a particular zone is fit and proper as the Senate President.
“From every zone of this country, we have ranking members in the National Assembly all eminently qualified to be Senate President but we cannot have two Senate presidents.
“So, in this case, considering other factors, the party, and when I say the party, I am not just referring to the NWC because there was a wide consultation across the country, the party leaders, governors and Mr President.
“So, this is not just something coming from the Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole or NWC, it is the position of the ruling party. So, the idea of taking the thing to the zone is an option we had also considered before now arriving at a particular individual from the Northeast.
“I have listened to the PDP react to this and in their usual style they exhibited gross ignorance. What we practise in Nigeria is called the Presidential System of Government and in such a system, it is winner takes all.
“Once you win, you take whatever you won. There is no room for power sharing. We do not need it because we do not need them (PDP) to run this government. We have enough number to run this government and in any case, when we were campaigning, we never told Nigerians that we were going to share power with any other party.
“We told them, ‘please, entrust power to us fully’. And Nigerians have graciously assented to that. It would be a betrayal of that trust to go ahead and start sharing power with a party, particularly the PDP that has been rejected by by Nigerians.
“We are smarting from the experience of the last four years, precisely what happened in 2015 when some traitors in the APC fold sold our birthright to an opposition party and some people now considered that to be the new normal. It is not.
“In fact, that was undemocratic. It was treachery and we thank God also that Nigerians have punished the people that are involved. They were rejected. Many of them are now on compulsory retirement from politics.
“That is the verdict of the people of this country for those who dared to compromise basic democratic principles which says that in a presidential system of government, when you have the majority, you have the trust of the people to form a government without conceding anything to the people they have rejected.
“If they wanted PDP, they would have voted for the PDP. We patterned our Presidential system of government after the United States of America USA. When last did you see them go to the floor to elect the Speaker?
“Any party that has the majority automatically has the speaker. If you remember, Pelosi was the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Immediately, the Republicans got majority, she became the Minority Leader.
“It is automatic except where you have traitors; people who do not have a commitment to values whose only interest is to fester their own selfish desires. In the last election in the US, when Democrats became the majority, Pelosi reverted and became the Speaker”, he explained.
“All the Principal Officers are determined by simple majority and because Nigerians have given us more than what we had even in the outgoing dispensation, we have enough to elect all our officers.
“We do not need a single vote from the PDP and in any case, we don’t actually envisage any election on that day because we are going to present to our members to occupy these positions and it is the collective position of the party and all our members are very experienced politicians who understand what this means.
“When they get to the floor, they are going to read out the names and if the PDP so desire, they can bring a candidate and follow that candidate with the number they have got. So, it will be an exercise in futility for PDP to nurse the ambition to share from what Nigerians have taken from them.
“It is not the party that will determine whether there will be an election or not. By the time we announce these names, having a clear majority on the floor, any one that wants to oppose would have to present his candidates, backing them up with numbers.
“So, there is only one person being put forward and then you have a consensus. So, even if there is going to be an election it would just be a mere formality. We do not envisage a situation where two APC senators would stand as candidates for a position. That would only happen if this party has done its homework”.
On the attacks of Ali Ndume, one of the contenders for the Office of the Senate President on Adams Oshiomhole for imposing Lawman on Members, the APC spokesman said, “Sen. Ali Ndume who has been reported as expressing interest in contesting against Lawan was merely expressing his democratic rights, but that he must subscribe to the dictates of the party.
“The day he subscribed to be a member of the APC, he signed off to abide by the dictates of the party and we take what has happened in the last 24 hours as an expression of how badly the news hit him, but we are also conscious of the fact that Sen. Ali Ndume is a respected member of the APC, he is a leader in this party and we know he knows the right thing to do and on whose side he rightly belongs and that also includes any other person who has such grievances”.
Meanwhile, the APC National Publicity Secretary stated that Governor Rochas Okorocha who has not been issued Certificate of Return by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC after been declared winner of Imo West Senatorial District is still under suspension by the party, hence the party can not intervene on his behalf.
“On the refusal of INEC to issue a certificate of return to Gov. Okorocha who was announced as Senator-elect in his zone, this party cannot take any action.
“Do not forget that Gov. Okorocha is on suspension. So, as far as this party is concerned, that situation remains. So, there is no way we can say somebody is on suspension and then we still go ahead and start…in any case, he also has not come forward to say this is the problem he has because he also realizes that he is on suspension.
“So, until that is vacated before the party can now step in and say we have a full member who has issues that we need to resolve”, he stressed.
James Kwen, Abuja
