A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kano and former Commissioner for Works and Infrastructural Development, Engr Muazu M Dansarauniya, has called on the party leadership to settle for a Senate President from the Northwest and Kano in particular, to create a strong base for the party in the region in the face of other opposition parties wanting to take control.
He stated this in an emergency meeting with newsmen in Kano on Thursday to dismiss calls by the New Nigeria Peoples Party spokesman and Reps-elect, Abdulmumin Kofa, who condemned allotting the Senate Presidency seat to the north as a disservice to the nation.
The APC chieftain explained that it is only democratic for the party’s leadership to ensure that the seat for the Senate Presidency comes to the northwest and to Kano, the political heartbeat of the north.
He explained that the APC, despite the votes it had contributed to the election of the president-elect Bola Ahmad Tinubu, has only one Senator, Sen Barau Jibrli, in Kano State, and any mistake of not making him the Senate President would affect the strength and control of the region by the party.
He described the call by the NNPP as deliberately geared towards seizing control of the region by disallowing the APC to have a strong political leadership like the Senate president from there.
“Why this response is very important is that I heard my friend and brother from the NNPP, Abdulmumin Jibrin Kofa, who has just been elected as a member House of Reps saying that any candidate from the North, especially Muslim North, that aspires to lead the National Assembly, especially the Senate, has no love for Nigeria.
“I want to open this discussion to clearly reveal what is behind the discussion. I believe that is unfair for a minority party to basically come in and dictate to the APC what to do.
“But very importantly, we need to look at the motive behind this statement. We know that Jibrin is from NNPP and the NNPP leader is from Kano and Kano is the heartbeat of northwestern politics as well as northern Nigeria.
“So what they are trying to do is to strategically convince APC not to put a political leader in that space so that they can monopolize the politics of the region. We can see their plans.
“What I want to call on our leaders, especially the president-elect, to do is to look at the distribution of the political distributions as well as the contribution of the APC members to his success and also be able to consider the strategic nature of Northwestern Nigeria in terms of the outcome, not to leave this place without a key principal leadership in Nigeria that will physically galvanize support for us in the region.
“We have done very well in this presidential election. We have contributed the most votes. So you see, even in terms of reward and recognition, we have the right to say we need to have the Senate Presidency.
“The presidency has gone to our partners in the Southwest, the vice presidency has gone to our partners in the Northeast, and the largest voting block and the largest political block deserves the presidency of the Senate.
“Therefore, if NNPP people are saying that you don’t love Nigeria if you say you are giving us the Senate presidency, it is just a strategy to mobilize and have the entire Northwest to themselves, which is a very important block.
“Now we have seen how close this election has been, Northwest votes alone could have physically doubled what the rest of Nigerian votes could have given if we galvanize and institutionalize support in the region.
“So I’m calling on our leaders, the National Chairman of our party, the president-elect, to look at what the president has outlined as a government of national competence, and when we look at competence, we will not go beyond our senatorial presentation in Kano in the person of Sen Barau Jibrin,” he stated.
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