Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
After the inauguration of the ninth Assembly and election of both Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives respectively, attention has shifted to the selection of principal officers in the House.
There are eight other principal officers position to be occupied. These positions shared evenly between the ruling and opposition parties. Barring any last minute change, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila is expected to announce the principal officers at the resumption of the House this week.
The principal officers positions are: House leader, Deputy House leader, Chief Chip and Deputy Chief Whip, which will be filled by lawmakers from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). The APC is the majority party with 211 members.
For the minority caucus, there are the positions of Minority Leader, Deputy Minority Leader, Minority Whip and Deputy Minority Whip, which will be filled majorly by lawmakers elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The PDP has a total of 128 members in the 360-man House, while the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Accord Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) combined, have 20 members.
In the heat of the campaign for the speakership of the House, Director- General of the Gbajabiamila Campaign Organisation, Abdulmumin Jibrin had said that the principal officer positions in the ruling party will be shared across the six geo-political zones.
Consequently, with the South West and the North Central producing the speaker and deputy speaker respectively, it is expected that the position of House leader, deputy House leader, chief whip and deputy chief whip will be shared among the other four zones- South East, South South , North West and North East.
North East battle North West for House Leader
The contest for the House leader is more or less a straight fight between the North West and the North East geo-political zones. After the 2019 general elections, members of the House from the two zones, among other lawmakers from other parts of the country, had indicated interest in the speakership position.
However, after the APC zoned the speakership and deputy speaker positions to the South West and North Central respectively, many of the speakership hopeful from the North East and North West withdrew from the contest. Among those who withdrew in deference to the APC zoning formula were former chairman, House Committee on Agricultural Services, Tahir Monguno; former chief whip, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa; Yusuf Yakub and former chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Abdulrasak Namdas. Others are the former chairman, House Committee on Defense, Aliyu Betera and the former chairman House Committee on Higher Education, Aminu Suleman.
Daily Sun gathered prior to the inauguration of the House last month, the permutation within the APC caucus was that the North West will produce the leader of the House, while the North East will produce the chief whip. On the hand, the South South and South East were expected to produce the deputy House Leader and the deputy chief whip respectively.
Those aspiring for the position from the North West include Ado-Doguwa, Suleiman and Datti Ahmed.
Regardless, in the aftermath of the emergence of Gbajabiamila as the speaker, the calculation seems to have changed. Inside sources say in the last couple of days, some interest groups within the House have been making a strong case for the position of House leader to be ceded to Monguno, who hails from Borno State, albeit to the consternation of lawmakers from the North West, who are angling for the position. Those pushing for the Borno- born lawmaker to become the next House leader argue that he is a core party man, who has always toed the line of the ruling APC as regards the leadership of the National Assembly.
For instance, prior to the inauguration of the 8th Assembly, Monguno was nominated by the APC to serve as the deputy speaker, with Gbajabiamila as the party’s preferred choice for the speakership. However, the emergence of Yakubu Dogara as the speaker scuttled that arrangement.
But Ado-Doguwa is of the opinion that the ruling party should cede the position of House leader to the North West as a reward to the zone for their support to the APC in the 2019 polls.
‘’I would expect the party to remember that I come from a zone that gave the party the highest electoral contribution to the APC. The North Western part of the country has the highest number of the APC members in the House of Representatives. In my caucus, which I lead as the chief whip, the North-West caucus has almost 92 members and even with the recent Zamfara case, we have no fewer than 85 members. So I want to believe that the party would be just, humble to reciprocate the electoral gesture we gave to the party in the last general elections,” the former chief whip said.
Daily Sun gathered that within the North West, there is also a tussle between Kano and Kaduna states, over which of the two states will produce the House leader. Analysts say if the campaign for Monguno to be made House leader sails through, it will change the earlier calculation for the sharing of offices in the majority party.
Uneasy calm in PDP caucus
Unlike in the APC, the issue of who leads the opposition party has been decided. The PDP lawmakers at a meeting with the leadership of the opposition party in Abuja settled for Kingsley Chinda as minority leader. Chinda, who represents Obio/Akpor Federal Constituency of Rivers State, is the immediate past chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts. Others who vied for the post of minority leader were the former chairman of the House Committee on Ethics and Privileges, Ossai Nicholas Ossai and Ndudi Elumelu.
Prior to Chinda’s emergence, the PDP had thought of nominating Dogara as minority leader. The idea, it was gathered, was aimed at eliminating the bad blood a heated contest would engender in the opposition caucus, as two governors elected on the platform of the PDP were said to be at daggers drawn over which state will produce the minority leader.
However, the emergence of the Rivers- born lawmaker as minority leader have altered the zoning of minority positions in the Senate.
In the aftermath of Chinda’s emergence, the party re-zoned the position of Senate Deputy Minority Whip, hitherto zoned to the South South, to the North West, with Senator Sahabi Yau from Zamfara tipped to replace Senator Clifford Ordia, who was earlier nominated for position.
Apart from Ordia, others earlier nominated as principal officers for the minority party include: Enyinnaya Abaribe, from Abia State(South East), Senate Minority Leader; Emmanuel Bwacha from Taraba ( North East) Senate Deputy Minority leader; Philip Aduda, from the FCT, Senate Minority Whip.
The development is however generating tension in the PDP caucus in the Senate, as well as in the House, as the South South senators have kicked against the new arrangement. Already, the immediate past Senate President, Bukola Saraki, have been mandated by the PDP leadership to reach out to Ordia and others, who may feel aggrieved with the planned reshuffling of minority positions in the National Assembly.
“The decision of the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) to replace Odia with Yau was informed by the need to reflect National character and spread in the Minority positions in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
“Accordingly the party has resolved to appeal to Odia to, in the interest of the country, give up the position to the North West Zone. This is because the South South zone has two positions out of the eight positions while the North West zone was completely shut out,” a source close to the party said.
Daily Sun gathered that the PDP leadership wants to ensure that all persons, who might be aggrieved by the zoning of the minority positions in the National Assembly are pacified before the list of its principal officers are sent to the leadership of the two chambers of the National Assembly. However, pundits say how the party resolves the protest by the South South senators will determine how the other minority positions in the House is shared among all the geo-political zones.
The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, told Daily Sun that the party is making efforts to ensure that there is no major disagreement within the opposition party over the minority positions.
Ologbondiyan, who assured that all the zones will be accommodated in the sharing of minority positions, further said every concern by the opposition lawmakers as it concerns minority positions in the parliament will be resolved satisfactorily.
“There are eight minority positions in the Senate and House of Representatives. Each geo-political zone will have one slot. And we have six geo-political zones. Definitely, there will be two zones that will have extra positions. Whatever we agree on as a party, in agreement with our senators and members of the House of Representatives will be brought to the public,” the party’s spokesman said.