South-south expected to produce Senate President, says Agbedi
The member representing the Sagbama/Ekeremor Federal Constituency of Bayelsa State in the House of Representatives on the platform of the PDP, Fred Agbedi, has stated that it is the turn of the South-South zone to produce the President of Nigeria’s Senate.
Agbedi, who is a member-elect for the expected 10th National Assembly, stated this in an interview on AIT’s Focus Nigeria programme on Thursday monitored by our correspondent.
He was responding to a question on the fact that some positions in the federal legislature were zoned and the Chief Whip of the Senate, Orji Uzo Kalu, re-elected under the auspices of the APC from the South-East, had already claimed that it was his turn to be Senate President.
Kalu had declared his intention to contest the senate presidency, saying ‘it is my turn to be senate president’, during a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday.
However, Agbedi, who is returning to the Green Chamber for the fourth term, following his re-election at the just-concluded National Assembly elections, argued that the senate presidency should come to the South-South in the interest of fairness and justice at the 10th NASS.
According to the Aghoro-born politician from the Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa, no southerner had become the senate president since after the era of the late Joseph Wayas.
Wayas, from Cross Rivers State, South-South Nigeria, was the Senate President in the Second Republic from 1979 to 1983.
Agbedi said, “Yeah, I think that the 2023 general elections brought in that new lexicon, ‘it is my turn’, and so everybody begins to say that ‘it is my turn’.
“But again I want to look at the issue of Senate Presidency and I can boldly sit here to say that if anybody should be talking about turn of Senate Presidency, the South-South should be talking about turn of Senate Presidency. Yes, because since after Joseph Wayas, I don’t think anybody has become Joseph Wayas, who is late now. I don’t think that anybody from the South-South has become Senate President.
“So, as at today, if we are talking about justice and fairness, l think the South-South should produce a Senate President.”
The legislator dismissed the sentiment in some quarters that the South-South had produced a President and Vice President in the 4th Republic, insisting that the senate presidency was the subject matter, stressing that the political calculation covered all the republics from Nigeria’s Independence till date.
Shedding more light on his position, he further said: “We are talking about Senate Presidency. The South-East has also produced a Vice President before. It is not about 4th Republic. We are checking the various republics and how far we have travelled as a nation-state right from Independence.
“When you check how far we have travelled as a nation-state, the South-South is the place that the Senate Presidency ought to go now. And I think that the South-Southerners should stand up and say, ‘it is our turn’.
“If in APC the new democratic lexicon is, ‘it is my turn’, then the South-South should say ‘it is our turn’.”
