Igbo group condemns APC zoning formula on National Assembly leadership

The Convener of World Igbo Summit Group (WISG) Prof Gregory Ibe has condemned the zoning formula for principal officers of the 10th National Assembly as recently announced by the National Working Committee of the APC, saying it’s against the South East.

Prof Ibe, who in a statement by his media adviser, Sleek Ogwu, was reacting to a pronouncement made by the National Publicity Secretary of APC Felix Morka, which micro-zoned the office of the Senate President to the South-South region with Senator Godswill Akpabio as preferred candidate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives to North West with Hon Abbas Tajudeen as consensus nominee, described the zoning arrangement as totally discriminatory and a glaring manifestation of the non-inclusive stance of the APC against the South East.

Prof Ibe, Abia governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the 2023 elections, was of the view that if the APC goes ahead to implement the zoning arrangement as announced, the party will be overtly sustaining the parochial apartheid policy it introduced against the South East region during the current Buhari administration.

"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 South East region.

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

While calling for total rejection of the zoning formula, Prof I’ve cautioned APC to refrain from further polarizing 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 firm tripod of WAZOBIA.

The statement advised APC to leverage and deploy the collective socio-political and economic strengths of the Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo in the act of nation building.




FI