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Convener of World Igbo Summit Group (WISG), Prof Gregory Ibe has lashed out at the zoning formula for principal officers of the National Assembly as announced by the National Working Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC), saying it was against the South East.
Ibe, in a statement by his media adviser, Sleek Ogwu, said if the APC proceed to implement the arrangement, the party would be overtly sustaining the parochial apartheid policy it introduced against the South East during thePresident Muhamadu Buhari-led administration.
Under the zoning formula announced by APC National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, the Senate Presidency is allotted to the South South with Senator Godswill Akpabio as the preferred candidate and Speaker of the House of Representatives to the North West with Abbas Tajudeen as consensus nominee.
Ibe, who was Abia governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), described the zoning arrangement as totally discriminatory and a glaring manifestation of the non-inclusive stance of the APC against the South East.
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‘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 marginalisation against the South East region.
‘By willfully marginalising 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’ stigmatisation.’
While calling for total rejection of the zoning formula, Ibe cautioned APC to refrain from further polarising the nation through divisive policies which tend to discourage inclusiveness, equity, fairness. He tasked the party and its leadership to pursue 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.
