2023 Presidency: The Hypocrisy Of Those Against Zoning

Southern Governors

 Suddenly, some Nigerians who think that they have the numbers allocated to them by questionable census over the years, have realized that only ‘the best’ is good enough for Nigeria. And they are the custodians of the best there is for president. How ironic!

The same people that could not get admission into the federal government colleges or the Unity Schools on merit as the cut off marks have to be lowered for them are the harbingers of the best there is in Nigeria.

Strangely, states and sections of the country that could not fill their quota into federal government owned universities are the best in the production of presidents for the country. They claim that the Presidency of Nigeria must be based on the most competent and they have monopolized competency to the level of arrogance, since nature in its bizarre sense of inequity and injustice bestowed only them with the right brains to run Nigeria. And what a great job they have done in their years of running Nigeria since the British left in 1960!

You will also notice that this hypocrisy is more obvious when you discover that in all the states in this section of the country that claimed that only the best is good enough to be Nigeria’s president, they are rotating the governorship position of their various states along the senatorial zones. Recently in one of the states in the region opposed to zoning the presidency, that is presently governed by the All Progressives Congress (APC) the stakeholders of the party ahead of its congresses met at the Government House and agreed that the state would go along with the zoning arrangement that had been in place in the state since the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was controlling the state beginning from 1999 until it was ousted by the APC in the 2015 tsunami that swept away the PDP in parts of the country. These same people that agreed on zoning in their state will come to Abuja and say only the most competent is what is needed to be president and that it does not matter where the president comes from. Really?

How come many of those who claimed today that they never bothered where the president comes from, insisted that it was their turn to produce the president in 2011 and was gearing to invoke Armageddon on Nigeria if power does not return to their region in 2015? The then incumbent president, who famously said his position, does not worth the blood of any Nigerian wisely relinquished power to these people to the well-deserved acclaim and admiration of the world. He had enough ground to question that election, but he chooses to save not only democracy, but also the country.

Competency and equity must go hand in hand and no part of the country should use any area it has comparative political advantage to suppress others. It will be met with resistance.

It was because the body language of the beneficiaries of the presidency as presently constituted does not sincerely indicate that they are enamored towards power shift to the South that made the Southern leaders to react.

Rising from their meeting yesterday in Lagos, the 17 Southern Governors of Nigeria under the aegis of Southern Governors Forum (SGF) served notice and declared that the next president of Nigeria must emerge from the Southern part of the country. It is instructive that these Southern Governors cut across the two major political parties in the country, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), the party of the incumbent president. The leader of the governors who read their resolutions was an APC governor, Chief Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN.

The message has been passed that no section of this country has a monopoly of competency in any area of human endeavor including presidential leadership. And that if competency, as a word, is taken literarily, the South has competent presidential materials in abundance that they could be outsourced to other parts of Africa.

It is also good to note that the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders, under the aegis of Southern and Middlebelt Leaders Forum (SMLF) in furtherance of the quest for the South to produce the next president had earlier declared that no Southerner should take up the position of vice president or national chairman of the two major political parties, PDP and APC ahead of 2023.

Having made the right move by insisting that the next president must come from the South, the governors need to go a step further to insist for justice and equity that the next president must come from the South East. The South West has produced the president for eight years when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was president between 1999 and 2007. The South-South has produced a president for five years, when Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was president between 2010 and 2015. South East is the only geopolitical zone that is yet to produce a president in the region; therefore the zone deserves the right of first refusal (ROFR) in the search for a president from Southern Nigeria in 2023.