Crisis is currently brewing between two council areas in Kogi State over the zoning arrangement for the Senate and House of Representatives seats for the 2015 national assembly election.
The council areas, Lokoja and Kogi, which form part of the seven that made up the Western Senatorial Districts of the state, are presently at a loggerheads over the zoning of the Lokoja /Kogi federal constituency to Lokoja and the Senate seat to Kogi council areas by some leaders of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from the area.
In distancing itself from the zoning arrangement, Kogi council area of the party said the purported zoning was capable of distorting the existing understanding among the seven local governments that made up the Western Senatorial district of the state.
Speaking through the stakeholders’ forum, the Kogi council area PDP unequivocally rejected the purported zoning arrangement explaining that “The Kogi West senatorial slot is not the exclusive property of Lokoja/Kogi federal constituency and therefore cannot be zoned by it without the participation of other federal constituencies within the senatorial district.”
The forum chairman, Alhaji Salihu Adamu, told newsmen in Lokoja that the purported zoning of the senatorial districts to Kogi council area was aimed at undermining the existing arrangement in “respect of Lokoja/Kogi federal constituency to the detriment of Kogi council area and deny the Kotonkarfi people their rightful claim to the House of Representatives slot in 2015.”
He informed that the forum believed that a realistic zoning arrangement in respect of Kogi West Senatorial Districts for 2015 must take into considerations the interest of the Okun speaking people of the Western Senatorial District with whom they enjoyed robust political relationship.
