The All Progressives Congress (APC) has formally confirmed that it has settled for the choice of Senator Ahmed Lawan from Yobe State as the Senate President of the 9th National Assembly.
Sen. Lawan is currently the Majority Leader in the Senate.
The party said the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is exhibiting ignorance by planning to share National Assembly’s leadership positions with it, emphasising that not even a committee position except minority and public accounts committee will be given to the opposition.
Addressing a press conference on Wednesday in Abuja, at the party’s secretariat, the APC National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, said it would not share any position in the National Assembly with members of the PDP, adding that it will be a winners takes it all affair as is applicable in all democratic set up.
He said: “In a presidential system of government, it is winner takes all. There is no room for power sharing with PDP.
“The news has been out that we had an interaction with the senators-elect, with the President, governors, leaders of the party and NWC members where it was presented to the stakeholders that the ruling party has decided on who will be the next Senate President according to what the democratic rule says and the person’s name is Senator Ahmed Lawan.
“Since that news came out, this party has not come out to contradict itself. So, that has been done but it’s left for the party to do the needful and have that sorted out.
“Let me take that further, my emphasis on the fact that we are not going to share power with the people that Nigerians have rejected, including the fact that what the PDP people call juicy committees and we in APC call strategic committees is exclusive for APC.
“We don’t need them to head any committee where they are going to compromise on the promises we have made to Nigerians. Nigerians cannot give us a mandate and we take part of it and hand over to the people they have rejected, we cannot betray the people of this country and we will not do it.
“So, the zoning arrangement for the other positions is in the works and just as the media and Nigerians have been informed as who our preferred candidate for the Senate President is, we will come out to tell you what the zoning formula is for the remaining offices in the Senate and also in the House of Representatives.”
He further explained that his party will not expect a single vote of the PDP senators to decide who the next principal officers will be in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in the 9th Assembly.
“There is no room for power sharing because we don’t need them to run this government. We have enough numbers to run this government.
In any case, when we were campaigning, we never told Nigerians that we are going to share power with any other party. We told them please entrust power unto us.
“It will be a betrayal of trust to go ahead and start sharing power with a party, particularly the PDP that has been rejected by Nigerians.
“We are snatching from the last experience, what happened when some traitors within the APC sold our Democratic and political right to an opposition party which some people now consider to be a democratic normal”, he added.
