APC chieftain: North-west deserves senate presidency | NNPP can’t dictate to our party

Muazu Dansarauniya, chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kano state, says the senate president of the 10th national assembly should be from the north-west geopolitical zone. 

Speaking with journalists on Friday in Kano, Dansarauniya called on the APC to zone the position to north-west.

Recently, Abdulmumin Jibrin, member-elect of the house of representatives, said a northern Muslim should not be supported to become senate president.

Jibrin, a member of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), said the position should go to a southern Christian.

“My personal opinion — if you look at the entire controversy of the Muslim-Muslim ticket, I think anybody who loves this country should not be thinking that the number 3 position should be a northern Muslim,” Jibrin had said.

‘NNPP INTENDS TO DOMINATE POLITICS IN NORTH-WEST’

Reacting to Jibrin’s comments, Dansarauniya said leaders of a minority party cannot dictate to the ruling APC.

The APC chieftain said the senate president position should be zoned to the north-west, adding that the zone produced the highest number of votes for the APC in the presidential election.

He called for support for Barau Jibril, a Kano senator-elect, to become the next senate president.

“I believe that is unfair for a minority party (NNPP) to basically come in and dictate to the APC what to do,” he said.

“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 north-west 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 monopolise the politics of the region. We can see their plans.

“Therefore, if NNPP people are saying that you don’t love Nigeria, if you say you are giving us (north-west) the senate presidency, it is just a strategy to mobilise and have the entire north-west to themselves — a very important bloc.

“Now we have seen how close this election has been, north-west votes alone could have physically doubled the votes of the rest of Nigeria if we galvanise and institutionalise support in the region.

“So I’m calling on our leaders, the national chairman of our party, and the president-elect, to look at what the president-elect 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 Barau Jibril.

“Some people talk about fairness and equity in terms of politics. I want to highlight this, democracy has a principal rule; this rule is about participation.

“You cannot not participate and then ask for a reward. The people that are asking for a reward, we are asking them to galvanise themselves, organise themselves in the next election and contribute to the success of the party.”