A meeting of senior members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), called to resolve issues concerning the zoning of top offices in the incoming majority party in the National Assembly ended in a deadlock, Wednesday night.

The meeting came to a deadlock on account of the tussle between leaders of the North-East and South-West for the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The leaders at the meeting, nevertheless, agreed on the zoning of the office of Senate President to the North-Central and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, to the South-East.

Meanwhile, returning members of the House of Representatives were, yesterday, understood to have forged a consensus on breaking the deadlock by throwing up two of the returning members as their choice for speaker and deputy speaker.

Sources in the House confided in Vanguard last night that the returning members have thrown up outgoing minority leader, Femi Gbajabiamila and Yakubu Dogara for either speaker or deputy speaker of the House of Representatives.

Among those that attended the meeting on Wednesday night at the Rivers State Governor’s Lodge on Hassan Usman Katsina Street, Asokoro, Abuja were President-elect, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd); Vice-President-elect, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo; party leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; governors-elect, senators-elect as well as some executive officers of the party.

Vanguard gathered that besides reaching a consensus on the Senate Presidency which it zoned to North-Central, the meeting reached a deadlock on the issue of the Speaker as both supporters of the zoning of the office to the North-East and the South-West maintained their grounds.

A source, who was in the meeting, said the meeting at one stage degenerated to a hot verbal exchange between the supporters of the two zones. The development, it was gathered, forced the meeting to mandate the president-elect and the vice-president-elect to resolve the issue on a later date.

A senior member of the National Executive Committee, NEC, who was present at the meeting, however, played down developments at the meeting as he said what took place was not a formal meeting.

“We have not held our NEC and our NEC is going to resolve all these issues, so there is no need for anxiety,” the source said.

•Adapted from a Vanguard report.

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