Senate Presidency: North East region disowns Ahmad Lawan

The North-East caucus of the All Progressives Congress (APC) senators, yesterday distanced itself from the aspiration of Senator Ahmad Lawan to emerge as the next Senate President.
Caucus leader, Senator Danjuma Goje from Gombe State, told Senate correspondents that what was before the North east was how to persuade APC leadership to consider the region for the “highest position in the National Assembly.”
Besides, Goje said the caucus had opened channels of communication with five other caucuses in the chamber and outside the National Assembly as well.

His words: “The members of the North East APC Senators caucus in a meeting held in Kaduna Room of Transcorp Hilton Hotel on April 30, 2015 with the 12 of the 13 members in attendance and one apology from Ahmed Zanah, who was indisposed but was with us on telephone, also concurred, which means that he was in harmony with what we discussed yesterday.
“We resolved as follows- that I, Senator Mohammed Danjuma Goje, from Gombe Central senatorial district, was unanimously elected as the leader of the caucus and Senator Isa Hamamisu as the secretary of the caucus.
“While the party leadership is considering the zoning of the National Assembly leadership position, the caucus is appealing for the zoning of highest position in the National Assembly to the North East considering the special needs of this zone.
“In other words, we resolved to call the leadership of our party to formally zone the highest office of the National Assembly to our zone in view of our special circumstance.

“This caucus should be allowed in consultation with the party leadership, other caucuses, zonal leaders, other stakeholders to nominate the senator suitable to occupy such an office which is zoned to our zone.

“For this reason, the caucus urges the public and distinguished colleagues nationwide and indeed, everybody, Nigerians and non-Nigerians to completely disregard any purported endorsement of any Senator from the North East by any zone because zoning of posts by APC has not been formally done yet.
“We are waiting for our formal zoning of the various posts of the national assembly before we commence nomination and we believe that any post zoned to us must have our input as the caucus and then, we consult with other caucuses, party leadership and indeed, other stakeholders before arriving at a decision.
“We should completely disregard any endorsement of any of our member here or absent. We do not know anything about it, we do not support it, we disassociate ourselves completely from it.”
Senator Goje reiterated that the caucus was not in support of any other caucus adopting or endorsing any senator from the North east for the Senate Presidency.
“What we are saying is that we, the North East caucus, formally disassociate ourselves from any endorsement from any other zone.
“Other zones have the right to decide what they want but we in the North East are not associating ourselves with those so-called endorsements because the party has not zoned anything to us.
“It is after the zoning has been announced that we will sit down and nominate our candidates that we feel are capable and suitable to represent the zone.
“But we cannot stop others from doing what they want, all we are saying is that we are not part of it. We have nobody in mind yet, we have not decided anything because we do not know what is coming to us. We do not want to jump the gun”, Goje affirmed.
Senators-elect at the briefing apart from Goje, were, the Secretary of the caucus, Isa Ahmed Gusau; (Bauchi Central); Ali Ndume (Borno South); Bukar Abba Ibrahim (Yobe Central) and Abdulaziz Murtala Nyako (Adamawa Central).

Others are, Binta Garba (Adamawa North); Ahmed Abubakar (Adamawa South); Usman Bayero Nafada (Gombe North); Abubakar Jare (Borno North) and Sulyman Nazif (Bauchi North).