New Telegraph

2023: Gambling with Southern presidency

The two major political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have been playing a mind game on the zoning of their presidential tickets in 2023. ONYEKACHI EZE examines the validity of demography as a factor in determining the winner of the presidential elections in Nigeria

 

Even though the national chairmen of both the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are from the North, the two parties said they are yet to decide where their presidential candidates in next year’s election would come from. Out of the 17 PDP presidential aspirants, five are from the North while the rest are from the south.

 

The is more interesting given the position of the governors that the next president should come from the South. Unlike the previous elections, the party has in recent times refused to make a categorical statement on where its presidential candidate, in 2023, would come from.

 

The party’s National Executive Committee (NEC), at its last meeting in February this year, empaneled a 37-member committee to decide the zoning of its executive and legislative positions for 2023. The committee’s report will be a major item for discussion when the NEC meets again this week, May 10.

 

In the ruling APC, except Kogi State governor Yahaya Bello, majority of people who obtained the party’s nomination forms, are from the South. Despite the fact that President Muhammadu Buhari is from the North, the APC National Chairman Senator Abdullahi Adamu said the party is not yet to decide the zoning of its 2023 ticket.

 

Buhari will serve out his second term of eight years in office in May next year having been elected into office in 2015. Conventionally, both the national chairman and the president of PDP and APC don’t come from the same region. Senator Adamu the present APC National Chairman who is from the same region with President Buhari, was probably elected to the position because the president is expected to leave office next year.

 

In PDP, the North and South usually swap positions at the end of every tenure. That was why the party’s national chairmanship position, which was in the South between 2017 and 2021, was taken to the North after last year’s national convention. The impression given therefore, is that the party will pick its candidate for next year’s presidential election from the south.

 

The delay in announcing the zoning formula of their executive positions in 2023 is causing tension in the country. Concerned Nigerian Citizens (CNC) said the failure of the two parties to zone their presidential tickets is threatening the unity of the country.

 

Convener of the group Femi Osabinu, expressed surprise that most parties are planning to play down the zoning arrangement, just few weeks to their national conventions “with selfish excuses of population spread across the country.” Osabinu made case for a southern presidency, noting that “Since the return to civil rule in 1999, there has been an unwritten conventional way for power rotation between the North and the South.”

 

By 2023, the presidency would have been in North for the eight years. It is therefore expected that the next President after Buhari, would come from the South. Some PDP stalwarts from the North are using demography as bases for the retention of the party’s presidential tick et in the region.

 

Sokoto State governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal argued that for PDP to regain power at the centre next year, the party has to exploit the demographic advantage of the North over the South by allowing free context for all the regions. Ondo State governor Rotimi Akeredolu, has warned of likely crisis should next year’s presidency eludes the South.

 

In a letter to the APC leadership, the governor advised the party to tread the path of equity, adding that the agreement reached when APC micro-zoned party’s offices during its National Convention must be adhered to. “Our party, the All Progressives Congress, has started the process which will eventually culminate in the presentation of elected political leaders, who must steer the affairs of the country for another term.

 

“We have been able to hold the party’s convention successfully. New officers of the party have emerged in a process that is widely acknowledged as rancour-free. “The level of understanding and maturity displayed by all and sundry has been commendable. Known adversaries have been forced to accept the emerging fact that our party is formidable and ready for the next general elections. “We cannot, therefore, afford any

 

 

internal  bickering which holds the potential promise of causing distrust and militating against cohesion, harmony and the zeal to achieve set objectives.

 

“The current democratic dispensation is anchored on the unwritten convention driven by a principle of equity. Political expediency dictates, more appealingly, that while adhering to the spirit and letters of the laws guiding conduct of elections and succession to political offices, we must do nothing which is capable of tilting the delicate balance against the established arrangement which guarantees peace and promotes trust.

 

“Our party just elected officers on the established principle of giving every part of the country an important stake in the political calculus. “The focus has now shifted to the process which will culminate in the participation of our party in the general elections scheduled for next year.

 

All lovers of peace and freedom must do everything to eschew tendencies which may predispose them to taking decisions which promote distrust and lead to a crisis, the end of which nobody may be able to predict. “The leadership of the party ensured that the principle of rotational representation guided its decision at the just-concluded convention. The party  North. All other offices have been filled on this understanding. This is the time the leaders of the party must make a categorical statement, devoid of equivocation, on the pattern of succession.

 

“The party Executive Committee has fixed a fee for the purchase of the nomination form for the office. It is expected, fervently, that it will proceed to complete the process by limiting the propensities for disagreement to a region for possible micro-management. It is very expedient that we avoid self-inflicted crises before the general elections. “It is the turn of the Southern part of the country to produce the next president.

 

The party leadership should have no difficulty in making pronouncements on this very important issue, just as it has fixed various fees for the purchase of forms. This must be done without delay.

 

“The principle of Federal Character is enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, as amended. It will be disingenuous for anyone to argue against rotation at this period. “We must not keep our party men and women guessing about the position of the leadership of the party.

“This is the time to weigh in and take control of the process. No statement must suggest, even remotely, that the party harbours certain sentiments which may predispose it to consider throwing the contest open.

This is certainly not the time for equivocation.” It is the fear of losing the presidency, if PDP picks its presidential candidate from the North, that is pushing APC to reconsider its earlier position for a southern candidate.

 

This was captured by the Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON) Osita Okechukwu, who accused the opposition party of “preying” on President Muhammadu Buhari’s 12 million vote bank, which he said, was the reason for the APC’s indecision on where its presidential candidate would come from.

 

He however, said PDP is to be blamed for the South is the 2023 presidency. Okechukwu said the leadership of the party is “watching closely the desperation and antics of our elder sister political party, the PDP. “They want to capture power, by all means, indeed using Machiavellian tactics. We all know that PDP is famished, thirsty and desperate to win the presidency in 2023.

 

They loathe the loss of their slogan ‘Share the Money’ through their absence from power at the centre for seven going to eight years. “PDP is aware that President Buhari will not be on the ballot in 2023, therefore, for them, there is a void to fill.

 

They must have reasoned that the Buhari’s vote bank would be up for grabs if they go north. To be frank, my take on the matter is that the swap option is still open because some of us from the South are still arguing that we have dormant votes, especially Igbo votes which will augment APC members’ votes from the North.

 

“However, if at the end of the day the zoning fails, we should blame PDP’s desperation, because we’ve been advocating a repeat of the Chiefs Obasanjo/Falae; Yaradua/Buhari and Buhari/Atiku models of 1999, 2007 and 2019 models.” Tambuwal who was a member of APC when the party defeated PDP in 2015, confessed that he was a member of the group that plotted the former ruling party’s ouster, exploiting the demographic advantage of the North. This is the same fear APC is expressing.

 

Those advocating this view may be ignorant of history, they rather chose to distort history to achieve a determined end. In 1993, Chief Moshood Abiola, a southerner, defeated Alhaji Bashir Othoma Tofa, a northerner. Tofa who was from Kano State, even lost his state to Abiola.

 

Though the election was annulled, it was not because a northerner lost to a southerner. In this dispensation, President Buhari lost twice to southerners.

He lost to former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003, and again, to President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011. Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Chief Robert Clarke, spoke of regional conspiracy as a determining factor to political power in Nigeria. Clarke observed that since 1999, presidential power goes to any region where two of the three major tribes of Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa/Fulani decided to take it after forming an alliance.

 

He said: “There are three major tribes, the Igbo, Yoruba and the Hausa. Where two of these major tribes gang up, that is where the power is going. “In 1999, when the constitution came in, Obasanjo wasn’t sponsored by the Yoruba, even though he was a Yoruba man; the Yoruba rejected him, and sponsored Falae. But the Northerners and the Igbo voted for him; the Yoruba never voted for him and he still won because the Northern Hausa and the Eastern Igbo decided to support him.

 

“In 2003, Obasanjo came for the second term, again, he was not sponsored by the Yoruba; the Yoruba put up another candidate but still he won. “In 2007, Uaru Yar’Adua was not supported by the Yoruba but the Igbo supported the Northerners and he won.

 

“In 2011, Jonathan came in, he’s not a Northerner but he was supported by the North and the Igbo, and he won. Having realized that power is between two of these sects, the Yoruba and the Hausa merged in 2015 and they produced Buhari.” This indeed, is the determining factor, not demography.

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