…CONSIDER SOUTH-EAST, GROUP URGES PDP
The leadership of a Kaduna-based pro-democracy group, Alliance for Credible Leadership (ACL), has called on the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to ensure that the position of the Senate President was zoned to the South, preferably the South-east.
Similarly, the group, which said its call transcend religious and ethnic leanings, also called on the leadership of the Ndigbo in the country, not to settle for any other position, other than that of the Senate President, saying that number three position was better than number four, in apparent reference to the position of the speaker of the House of Representatives, which some Igbos in the House of Representatives are already rooting for.
Speaking in a separate interview after paying a visit to The Sun's office in Kaduna at the weekend, Chairman and Secretary of the group respectively, John Musa and Danladi Maikudi, noted that it would amount to injustice on the part of the South to have a southerner as a president, northerner as the vice president, and then another northerner as the Senate president.
'Let me start by congratulating The Sun for doing a nice job. You guys are wonderful. Where you can't find any paper in the remotest part of this country, you will find The Sun. We give you kudos for that.
'However, we are here this afternoon to lend our voice to the ongoing debate on power sharing in the polity. As you know or may know, we are not members of any political party. We are a northern-based NGO, but we are concerned about justice, fair play and any other thing that will help in unifying this country. And giving the South-east the position will help in further unifying us as Nigerians.
'This is why we feel strongly that in the interest of justice, unity and fair play, our brothers from the South-east, should be considered for the position of the Senate president.'Mark was lucky to have a deputy that was not ambitious, otherwise, when attempts were made to create crisis in the Senate, if Mark's deputy had bought into it, it would have created some upsets. Go and find out, the previous impeachments during the Obasanjo regime succeeded because the deputies were willing tools.
'And since we have a president who does not share the temperament of Obasanjo today, the fear most Nigerians are expressing about allowing the Igbos to have it, will not be there.' The truth is that if the South-west had performed well by the PDP's standard at the National Assembly polls, it would have automatically gone there. Therefore, we cannot say because the South-west is out of it, then, we now deny the South their position in the scheme of things, no!
'So, we are using this medium, to call on the Igbos to put up their thinking caps and begin to agitate for it. They must also lobby other zones to make their case, because it will not just fall on their lap,' the group added.