Senate Presidency: Tinubu’s candidate, Lawan in troubled waters

The preferred candidate of national leader of the APC, Bola Tinubu for the post of Senate presidency, Sen Ahmad Lawan, may have run into troubled waters as ten out of the 13 senators, elected on the platform of the APC from the North-East, said in Abuja on Friday that they were not in support of Lawan’s emergence as the consensus candidate of the geo-political zone for the post in the incoming 8th National Assembly.
The lawmakers, led by Senator Danjuma Goje (Gombe Central) at a news conference, said they were still pleading with the leadership of the party to zone the position to their region, adding, however, that they had not picked anyone as the consensus candidate.
They also vowed to resist any attempt by anyone or group of people, to impose a candidate on them. The senators said they would decide on the consensus candidate on their own instead of queuing behind a candidate anointed by outsiders.
It would be recalled that the emergence of Aminu Tambuwal as Speaker of the House of Representatives in the last dispensation was fraught with similar outcome, as members of the House went against the wishes of the party leaders to elect a candidate of their choice.
Goje, who spoke on behalf of his colleagues, explained that senators from the North-East held a caucus meeting on Thursday night at the Kaduna room, Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja with Lawan himself in attendance.
Goje alleged that Lawan sneaked out of the meeting while they were still agreeing on the resolutions, only for him to be announced few minutes after as the candidate endorsed from the North-East for the post of Senate President by both the North-West and South-West senate caucuses.
He said, “This to us, the remaining 12 APC senators-elect from the zone, is fraudulent and unacceptable and in fact, desperation at its peak.”
Goje, a former Gombe State governor, said, “Therefore, in the light of the above resolutions, we call on all Nigerians to completely disregard any purported endorsement of any Senator from the North-East by any zone for the position yet because any post, zoned to us, must have our input.
‘”We don’t know anything about any endorsement of anybody from the North-East being touted around on the pages of newspapers. We dissociate ourselves from any endorsements from other zones because the party has not zoned any position to us yet and we don’t want to jump the gun”, he stated..

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