New Telegraph

2023: PDP dead without zoning –Ozichukwu

A former Vice Chairman (South East), of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Nze Fidelis Ozichukwu, has warned the party of the consequences if it decides to abandon zoning of its presidential ticket in 2023. Ozichukwu, who is a member of the 36-member PDP zoning committee, said the party has the moral burden if it fails to zone the ticket.

 

PDP National Chairman, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, had last Thursday inaugurated the committee and charged the members to eschew rancour and division but to pursue their assignment without bitterness. But the PDP former Vice Chairman, in a prepared text, which he circulated among the committee members, said: “The party was founded on the principles of justice, equity, fairness and inclusiveness.

 

“These same principles remain the pillars on which any institution or even nation can be sustained successfully.” He called for collective response to what he described as a “the PDP dilemma and the Nigerian Question.” Ozichukwu argued that the call for the party to jettison zoning renders PDP “prostrate, a living dead and without conscience. “It’s not it enough to win elections.

 

The crucial question is how? Not by selective morality, of course. “We must do away with the belief that the end justifies the means and insist on the moral dictum that nothing morally wrong can be politically right. It is, therefore, the means that justifies the end.”

 

He noted that Part iii of 1998 constitution says Nigeria should be restructured, “in the spirit of true federalism in order to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of power… to conform with the principles of power-shift and power-sharing, rotation of key political offices… as to create socio-political conditions conducive to national peace and unity.”

 

Ozichukwu further added that Article 7 (c) of the 2012 PDP amended Constitution says the party should adhere “to the policy of the rotation and zoning of party and public elective offices in pursuance of the principles of equity, fairness and justice.

 

“This in itself must reflect the geopolitical character of the region or zones (and at all levels,) to which it is slotted.

 

“The 2006 constitution as amended went further to establish a moral social order which will result in the spiritual regeneration of the nation and a strict code of conduct.

 

“It again went further to emphasise in Article 7, Section 2.C that in pursuance of the principles of equity, justice and fairness, the party shall adhere to the policy of rotation and zoning of party and public elective offices and it shall be enforced by the appropriate executive Committee at all levels.”

 

According to him, it is in anticipation of challenges and denials of such rights that led to the establishment of the PDP Board of Trustees (BoT), to “ensure highest standards of morality in all the activities of the party by acting as the conscience of the party…with power to call to order any officer of the party whose conduct falls below the norm; and (to) ensure high morale of members of the party, and that the party enjoys a good image before the Nigerian populace.”

 

He recalled that the former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, former President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki; Sokoto State governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal and others, left “PDP in protest, in opposition to continued Jonathan presidency. “They insisted that it was the turn of the North, based on the PDP fundamental principle of zoning and rotation.

 

“What has now changed?

 

“It’s the crying need for nation building and the sake of honour that we are asking these elders and leaders to live by example and up to expectations.

 

“We must collectively hold our dear party to its words, declarations and promises. “We must never eternalise multiple principles and plural principals and eulogize fundamentalists on weekends and evolutionists on weekdays.

 

“We must hold members and our party’s Board of Trustees as the conscience of the party, to do right things right and insist on its rotation and zoning principle. It’s the pivot around which the party revolves.

 

“In 2023, it shall be right and just to let the South produce the next presidential candidate of the PDP.

 

“The South has no less galaxy of stars, who have the requisite knowledge, physical dynamism; are vast in skills and competencies for economic revival, and national transformation to achieve national unity and cohesion, reposition Nigeria in the comity of nations, and reinvent her to become the pride of the black race.”

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