The Northcentral and Northwest are jostling for the House of Representatives leadership.
To stakeholders in the Northcentral, the region should be considered for Speaker, based on its contribution to the success of the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the general election.
But the House members-elect in the Northwest have endorsed Kawu Sumaila for the job.
A pro-Northcentral coalition has vowed to resist any attempt by the APC leadership to zone the speakership to any other region.
The Northcentral zone is pleading that the seat should not go to the Southwest.
The plea came in the wake of reports that the ruling party may have planned its power-sharing formula for the leadership of both chambers of the National Assembly.
The Northcentral coalition plans to mobilise against the party should it be zoned out of the race.
A coalition of 25 groups, under the aegis of the Northcentral APC Young Patriots, told reporters in Abuja that the performance-based criterion applied in arriving at the candidature of Senator Ahmed Lawan for the Senate President should equally be used in zoning the Speaker’s position to their region.
They argued that the Northcentral contributed largely to the success of the ruling party in the just-concluded general election.
Stressing that the group is for justice and equity, their spokesman, Dominic Alancha, said: “If the party imposes a candidate, then it should be prepared for what happened in the Eighth Assembly on the emergence of the National Assembly leadership.
“The motto/principle of APC is justice, peace and unity; as such justice must seemingly seem to have been done. The non-adherence to this principle accounts for myriad of challenges within the party which have led to APC losing most of the states to the opposition party during recently concluded gubernatorial election.
“In order to avoid the sad occurrence of the last Assembly, where the anointed candidates of the party lost the key leadership positions, it was the expectation of most APC loyalists and supporters that the party was going to hand out an equitable zoning arrangement that will cater for all the geopolitical zones based on their contribution to the party’s success at the poll.
“Moreover, it was expected that the party will zone the various leadership positions of the National Assembly based on clear, identifiable and equitable criteria that will be understood by all players.
“So far, the party has done the right thing in zoning the Senate leadership to the Northeast (the zone that produced the highest number of votes for the Patty).
“As for the House of Representatives, although the party has not formally announced the zone that will produce the Speaker, there are indications that the party intends to zone the Speakership position to the Southwest.
“If this is true, the salient question will then be: what criteria is the party using to zone these leadership positions. One would expect that since the Senate Presidency was zoned to the North-East, being the zone that contributed the highest number of votes after the Northwest (3,238,783), the speakership position will naturally go to the next in line, the Northcentral zone that produced the second largest vote after the Northeast (2,465,599).”
The elected APC members of the House of Representatives adopted Sumaila to lead them.
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They explained that their choice of Sumaila was in line with the party’s national leadership’s decision on the zoning being worked out for the National Assembly leadership.
Samaila, who is from Kano State, is their preferred candidate for any position to be zoned to the Northwest by the APC.
There were speculations that APC may zone deputy speaker to the Northwest.
The newly-elected members were said to have agreed to back Sumaila, who is assumed to be one of them having just won election to return to the House.
The national coordinator of the forum, Ibrahim Al-Mustapha Aliyu, told reporters after a meeting in Kaduna that they decided to back Sumaila due to his experience as a legislator.
He said: “Northwest new members have endorsed and aligned with the position of the party on the leadership structure of the Ninth Assembly.
“We have endorsed Kawu Sumaila for any leadership position zoned to Northwest.”
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