A chieftain of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Musa Saidu, has given the reason why the Southeast region of Nigeria cannot get the Senate Presidency of the 10th National Assembly.
Saidu said the Southeast cannot get the Senate Presidency of the 10th National Assembly because it “failed to learn from its past mistakes”.
He added that the Southeast should not be asking for the Senate Presidency when the region didn’t even vote for the All Progressives Congress, APC during the 2023 general election
He stated this when speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja.
“I want to say without fear of contradiction that the South-east has no justification to start asking for the Senate Presidency of the 10th National Assembly because it is not part of those who voted for the APC.
“The South-east can’t be in contention for the Senate Presidency because its people didn’t vote for the APC,” he said.
Saidu, also the leader of the Arewa Community in Southern Nigeria, stated this while reacting to the demand by the South-east Senate Caucus that the APC should zone the position to the region for fairness and justice.
“You are talking about fairness and justice when you didn’t even vote for the APC during the 2023 general election.
“Other zones voted massively for the party and the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, while you decided to give your votes entirely to the Labour Party.
“How can you come out to say that the President-elect should zone the Senate Presidency to South-east when you didn’t vote for him?
“Supposing he didn’t win the election, would he be in the position to zone the Senate Presidency?” he said.
Saidu said the South-east had a similar problem with President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019 when it demanded the position of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).
The ACF chieftain said, “When you ganged up to defeat the APC even in the stronghold of the president-elect, what were you thinking of?
“The Senate Presidency is not for free; you have to work for it.
“You are calling for equity and fairness, but you decided to concentrate your votes for LP. Is there fairness in that?
“I think that the zoning of the Senate Presidency to South-south is not entirely a bad idea because the zone performed better in terms of voting for the APC in the last election.”