Engr. Muazu M. Dansarauniya, a prominent member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kano and a former commissioner for works and infrastructure development, has urged the party leadership to choose a Senate President from the Northwest, and Kano in particular, in order to establish a strong base for the party in the region in the face of other opposition parties vying for power.
The New Nigeria Peoples Party spokesman and incoming representative, Abdulmumin Kofa, called the allocation of the Senate Presidency seat to the north a disservice to the country, and he made this statement in a press conference with reporters on Thursday.
The APC leader said that the party’s leadership must do everything possible to guarantee that Kano, the political hub of the north and the northwest, receives the Senate presidential position.
He said the APC only has one senator, Sen. Barau Jibrli, in Kano State, notwithstanding the votes it gave to the election of the newly elected president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and that any error in not electing him the Senate President would weaken the party’s position and its ability to manage the area.
He described the request by the NNPP as being purposefully made in order to seize control of the region by preventing the APC from having strong political leadership, such as the Senate president, from there.
“The reason this response is crucial is because I overheard my NNPP friend and brother, Abdulmumin Jibrin Kofa, who was recently elected to the House of Representatives, claim that any candidate from the North, particularly the Muslim North, who seeks to lead the National Assembly, particularly the Senate, has no love for Nigeria.
“I’d want to start out by making it clear what is being discussed.” In my opinion, it is unjust for a minority party to essentially go in and tell the APC what to do.
We must examine the motivation behind this remark, though, since it is crucial. We are aware that Jibrin is a member of the NNPP and that its head is from Kano, which serves as both the political and cultural hub of northern Nigeria and the northwest of Nigeria.
Thus, they are attempting to intentionally persuade APC not to nominate a political figure in that position so that they may control the politics of the area. Their strategy is clear to us.
“What I want to do is call on our leaders, especially the president-elect, to look at the political distributions, the APC members’ contributions to his success, and also be able to consider the strategic nature of Northwestern Nigeria in terms of the outcome, so that we don’t leave this place without a key principal leadership in Nigeria that will actually galvanise support for us in the region.
In this presidential election, we performed quite well. The most votes have been submitted by us. You can see that we have the right to claim that the Senate presidency is necessary, even in terms of compensation and recognition.
“Our allies in the Southwest received the presidency, our partners in the Northeast received the vice presidency, and the Senate should be presided over by the bloc with the most votes and the most political weight.”
“So, if NNPP supporters claim that you don’t love Nigeria if you say you’ll give us the Senate presidency, it’s merely a tactic to organise and claim the entire Northwest, which is a crucial block.
“Now that we’ve seen how close this election was, we can understand that if we can mobilise and institutionalise support in the Northwest, just our votes could have physically quadrupled what the rest of Nigeria’s votes could have contributed.
So, he said, “I’m calling on our leaders, the National Chairman of our party and the president-elect, to look at what the president has outlined as a government of national competence, and when we look at competence, we will not go beyond our senatorial presentation in Kano in the person of Sen. Barau Jibrin.”
