A fresh suit filed before the Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday is seeking to reverse the zoning arrangement of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for the principal officers of the incoming 9th National Assembly.

The suit filed by Kingdom Human Rights Foundation International and a member of the APC, Kenneth Uzochukwu, described the zoning arrangement which they said excluded the South-East geo-political zone as unconstitutional, unjust, discriminatory and clannish.

The APC, which constitutes the majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, had adopted Senator Ahmed Lawan from the North-East zone as its candidate for the position of the Senate President and Femi Gbajabiamila from the South-West zone as Speaker.

In the suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/477/2019, the plaintiffs noted that the APC had also zoned the position of the Deputy Senate President to South-South and that of the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives to the North-Central.

They argued that with President Muhammadu Buhari from the North-West, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo from the South-West and the Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad from the North-East, it implies that the South-East zone has been totally excluded from ‘the political arithmetic of Nigeria’.

They contended that the arrangement  ‘breaches the express provisions, spirit and tenor of sections 14 (3) and (4) and 244 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and offends the Federal Character Principle of Nigeria’.

The APC, the National Assembly and the Federal Character Commission were joined in the suit as the first, second and third defendants respectively.