10th NASS Leadership: 34 APC Senators-Elect Shun Tinubu’s Meeting, As President ‘Fails’ To Unveil Akpabio, Abbas

The battle for the soul of the 10th National Assembly leadership scheduled for inauguration on June 13 took a disturbing dimension last night when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu surprisingly failed to unveil the ruling party’s ‘anointed candidates’ for the Upper and Lower Chambers of the Legislature.

President Tinubu had convened a meeting of the Senators-elect and House of Representatives-elected lawmakers of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), to discuss issues affecting the wellbeing of the party.

Sources close to the meeting told THE WHISPERER that participants at the meeting had expected, among others, that the President would use the fora to finally resolve the crisis rocking the emergence of the Principal Officers of the National Assembly.

By implication, many of the attendees of the meeting were keen on seeing President Tinubu unveil Senator Godswill Akpabio and Tajudeen Abbas, as anointed candidates of the ruling party as endorsed by the National Working Committee (NWC).

According to reports, as soon as the meeting came to an end, speculations became rife that all may not be well with the NWC’s decision, especially as it was said that only 23 APC senators attended the meeting.

However, it was also learnt that Senators Orji Uzor Kalu, Abdulaziz Yari, alongside 34 other senators reportedly boycotted the meeting. Also, it was gathered that one of the fallouts of the meeting was that the Presidency was of the opinion that avert- ing an all-northern presiding officers for the 10th NASS was important, thus confirming New Telegraph’s exclusive story recently of a Plan B to have Prof. Julius Ihonvbere from the South South on the stand-by.

Furthermore, in a bid to ensure transparency, it was learnt that the meeting looked at a possibility of conducting the Senate president, House speaker elections simultaneously in order to check clash of interests. At the meeting, President Tinubu told the lawmakers: “Let’s think Nigeria, think about the Nigerian project which is the larger project because it’s by the Grace of God that brought us all together here.

“We are the majority party and we should not allow our internal bickering to erode our chances. “Give whatever is needful as concessions to the opposition and hold on to the principal or pressing offices. “We have only one seat for Senate president, one seat for Speaker. “Only one person can be on each. The elephant is big enough, it now depends on how you slice it. Make consultations amongst yourselves and build national cohesion, national consensus.”

Speaking on the development, a source, who pleaded for anonymity, confided in this newspaper, that: “This whole drama has become very confusing to most of us honestly. “All the noise about Tinubu’s endorsement of Abbas and Akpabio we thought was going to be capped this evening when the president met us for the first time since his swearing in.

“You can imagine that even that of Representatives speaker that we thought is almost settled for Abbas is still cloudy. “We had the feeling that the G-6 has been broken, especially after the president met with the group. “What stopped him from announcing that to the Reps, even if ours in the Senate looks more dicey? “Mind you, most are just following some candidates.

They were waiting for the President to say it by himself, but now that he is evasive, it is not clear to us at all. “We were just APC and the meeting is in-house, a family one, and that is the appropriate place to say, guys, this is my thinking, but nothing happened in that regard. “This means a lot, especially when we observed that only about 23 of us were there as APC senators.

“Kalu, Yari and over 30 did not attend the meeting. I know there is still time to salvage the situation. “What surprised some of us is that prior to the meeting with us, some of us knew that the Presidency had put in place a machinery to avert the emergence of two Northerners as presiding officers of both Chambers. “And to achieve this, I think they are trying to ensure that the two elections take place at the same time so that even if Yari wins, Abbas will not be shut out at the green chamber. But there is a lot to be done if we want to be sincere.

“We know of course, that if Yari eventually wins, the Gbajabiamila group is planning to quickly nominate Professor Julius Ihonvbere as possible Speaker so that South South will not lose out because from the look of things, the Yari and Kalu alliance is heavily supported by majority of retired northern generals.”

• – THE WHISPERER