The ruling All Progressives Congress(APC) on Wednesday said its decision to adopt Senator Ahmed Lawan as the party’s preferred candidate for the position of the Senate President for the 9th Assembly is final.

Speaking at a press conference held at the APC national secretariat in Abuja, the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Lanre Isa-Onilu said the zoning formula for the remaining positions in the Senate and those in the House of Representatives was still being worked out.

His words: “We have decided who will be the next Senate President according to what democratic principles allow and that person is Senator Ahmed Lawan. That has been done and announced. It is left for the party to cross the ‘t’s and dot the ‘i’s to get that sorted out.

“My emphasis is on the fact that we are not going to share powers, including what the PDP people call juicy committees and we call strategic committees with people that Nigerians have rejected. They are exclusive for the APC.

“We don’t need them to head any committee where they are going to compromise the promises we have made to Nigerians. Nigerians cannot give us a mandate and we will go and give part of it to those they have rejected.

“We cannot betray the people of this country and we will never do it. The zoning arrangement for all the other positions is in the works.

“Just as the media and Nigerians have been informed about who our preferred candidate for the Senate Presidency is, we will come out to tell you what the zoning formula will be for the remaining positions in the Senate and also in the House of Representatives very shortly.”

He added: “What we practise in Nigeria is called presidential system of government. In this type of government, it is winners take all. Once you win, you take whatever you want. There is no room for power sharing.

“We don’t need it because we don’t need them (the PDP) to run this government. We have enough number to run this government. In any case when we were campaigning, we never told Nigerians that we were going to share power with any other party.

“What we told them was that they should entrust power to us. As it is clear that we have made good use of power in the last four years, we are going to make better use of it in the next four years.

“Nigerians accepted this. It will be a betrayal of that trust to go ahead and start sharing power with a party, particularly the PDP that has been rejected by Nigerians.

“They were banking on the experience of the last four years when some traitors within the APC fold sold our birthright to an opposition party. Some people now took that to be the new norm. It is not. In fact, that action was not democratic. It was treachery.”