10th NASS leadership: APC zoning formula discourages inclusiveness, equity — Igbo stalwart, Greg Ibe

By Our Reporter

Professor Gregory Ibe, former Abia state Governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, at the just-concluded 2023 general election across the country, has criticized the zoning formula recently announced by national working committee of the governing APC in Nigeria ahead of election of principal officers of the soon-to-be inaugurated 10th national assembly.

Recall earlier that the All Progressives Congress had endorsed Godswill Akpabio as Senate President and Jibrin Barau as the Deputy.

Abbas Tajudeen has been endorsed as House of Representatives Speaker and Ben Kalu as his Deputy.

However, Ibe, who is also the chancellor and Proprietor of Gregory University Uturu (GUU) in Abia, while frowning APC zoning formula in respect to the forthcoming election of principal officers for 10th leadership of the national assembly, on Thursday, described the party’s zoning arrangements as totally discriminatory and a glaring manifestations of the non inclusive stance of the party against the south east.

It was contained in a release issued on Thursday in umuahia, the Abia state capital, by the university’s public relations officer, Mr Sleek Ogwo.

While rejecting the zoning arrangements by the leadership of the All Progressives Congress, he maintained that if the party goes ahead to implement the zoning arrangements as announced, the party will be inadvertently sustaining the parochial apartheid policy it introduced against the southeast region during the present Buhari-led administration.

He partly stated: “the attention of the leadership of World Igbo Summit Group has been drawn to a purported zoning formula by the ruling APC for principal officers of the 10th national assembly which from every indication encourages the promotion of a punitive culture of discrimination and marginalization against the southeast.

“By wilfully marginalizing the southeast whole zoning the offices of President, Vice President, Senate President, Deputy Senate President and House of Representatives speaker, APC is simply advancing the parochial agenda of exclusion which was introduced through President Buhari propagation of the ’97 and 5 percent dichotomy and the ‘dot’ in a circle stigmatization”.

Ibe called for outright rejection of the zoning formula as he further opined will polarize the nation through divisive policies which tend to discourage inclusiveness, equity, fairness and rather advocated for a resort to the time tested arrangement of stabilizing the polity on the form tripod of WAZOBIA, leveraging and deploying the collective socio-political and economic strengths of the yoruba, hausa and igbo in the act of nation-building.

Reports had gathered since the publication of the zoning formula for the election of key principal officers of the 10th National Assembly by the APC, the media has been inundated with calls from different groups condemning the lack of inclusiveness, absence of proper consultation and undemocratic tendencies in the selection process.