(http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS3DwABF_WOpmUE-8iBXritbTtfswwKn_oNVGKm0QzOnHEBaGDl)
President Goodluck Jonathan has promised that the imbalance in the body politic caused by the election of a new speaker and deputy speaker in the House of Representatives will be redressed through other appointments.
On a reconciliatory note, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has reached a truce with key officers of the lower chamber over their refusal to abide by the party's position on the distribution of government positions.
The party had zoned the speakership to the South-west and deputy speakership to North-east to balance out the other appointments which saw the North-central get Senate presidency, South-east deputy Senate presidency and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). The South-south had already produced the president and the North-west the vice-president.
But the emergence Hon. Aminu Tambuwal from the North-west as speaker and Hon. Emeka Ihedioha from the South-east as his deputy has effectively shut out the South-west and the North-east from the top seven positions in government in the next four years, while the North-west now has the vice-presidency and speakership and the South-east controls the SGF, deputy Senate presidency and deputy speakership.
Fielding questions from United Nations correspondents at the UN auditorium at its headquarters in New York, President Jonathan said: "Well, I am not the chairman of PDP. I am just a member of PDP and the president of this country - though a senior member of the party. But based on our party structure, chairman of the party is the number one citizen of the party. As the president, I am second to him.
"But I don't think it is a major issue because if the House of Representatives, for one reason or the other has decided to vote against the position of the party, the speaker is going to be their own leader. We (PDP) will look at it as a party and see how we adjust to make sure that a section of the country doesn't feel marginalised."
Noting that there is always a lot of confusion about the issue of zoning and the spread of political offices because Nigeria is multi-ethnic and multi religious, he said that is why there is the federal character law that set up the Federal Character Commission.
He said: "So to make sure that people don't get angry over certain things, the Federal Character Commission was established very long ago. It was even during the military government that we came up with the Federal Character Commission to make sure that offices are spread. So the PDP believes that whenever you elect the president, who comes with the vice-president, who would come from different zones, you spread other offices to the remaining zones.
"That has nothing to do with the so-called zoning that people are talking about. But there is always a mix up and for the circumstances of my own election; I don't like to comment on it because of mix up. So PDP tried to decide that after the president had emerged from the South-south and the vice-president from the North-west, that other offices should be distributed among other zones just to obey that federal character principle by ensuring that there is uniform distribution of the top political positions. But the House of Representatives, in their own wisdom, voted against the position of the PDP."
On the view that the South-west in particular, which the party zoned the speakership to, may have been marginalised by the election of Tambuwal, Jonathan said: "We should also know that even the South-west that does not seem to have a key position voted for the speaker (Tambuwal)."
According to him, "From the result, I believe they also voted for the speaker. I have not seen the analysis of the voting. You know in parliament, voting is no secret. It's open or open secret. So if you want to know, you will easily know who voted for whom."
He, however, said: "Even if that is the wish of the South-west, there may be a way of amending it. There are other positions within the parliament, even within the House of Representatives. You have the positions of the minority leader, minority whip, which could be used to balance that perceived skewed distribution."
Source: Thisday