As the race for the leadership of the 10th National Assembly gathers more steam, Dominic Alancha, a public affairs analyst and a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has advised the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, not to meddle in how the lawmakers choose their leaders.
He cautioned that leaving the National Working Committee (NWC) to zone the leadership of the National Assembly may in the long run truncate the independence of the legislative arm of government.
Alancha, while reacting to the development on Wednesday, also faulted what the NWC referred to as consensus, stressing that what transpired was far from consensus.
“To me, in a consensus arrangemen,t you will agree among yourselves that Mr. A should take this, and Mr. B should take that, and all of them will agree, and that is when you can say that there was consensus.
“But in this case, senators, members were not consulted. You can see in the South-East when they met, there was no single Senator contesting for that position that was consulted, whether Osita Izunaso, Orji Uzor Kalu, they are the two major candidates from the South-East that are contesting for Senate Presidency,” he submitted.
Alancha noted further that a similar scenario was in the House of Representatives, where Aminu Jaji was not consulted, Betara was not consulted, Idris Wase, the current Deputy Speaker and the highest ranking officer in the House was not also consulted, as well as the only female contestant not also consulted.
According to the public affairs analyst merit was not considered in these zoning arrangements and we are calling on the leadership of the party to reverse this decision.
“The way things are going in the National Assembly, they have ignited a situation where there will be rebellion, and the 2015 arrangement will come back to the table,” Alancha lamented bitterly.