How Zoning May Disrupt 2023 Electoral Process

Depending on how Nigeria’s major political parties decide on their choice of presidential candidates, observers say the polity could be heated up as the issue of zoning has been a sensitive and contentious one that could disrupt the 2023 electoral process.

With just about a year to the 2023 general election, one of the key issues that has dominated discussion across Nigeria, in recent times, is perhaps zoning, which raises questions as to the region that should produce a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari.

Nigeria’s two major political parties, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have not taken a categorical stand on which section of the country their presidential ticket would be zoned. However, the issue has been on the front burner and may go a long way in shaping permutations in the coming months ahead of the presidential primaries.

Since the advent of the Fourth Republic in 1999, there has been a rotation of the presidency between the South and the North as was practiced during the 16-year rule of the PDP.

Though not constitutionally backed, political leaders say that due to the heterogeneous nature of the country, power rotation arrangements had become necessary to address complaints of marginalisation and domination and to give equal power to Nigeria’s various ethnic groups.

There are some Nigerians who are of the view that citizens should rather vote for competence than consider the region where the candidate hails from.

Former military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida and President Buhari’s nephew, Mamman Daura, had, in recent time, openly kicked against power rotation, saying the arrangement had failed and that there was no need to zone the 2023 presidential ticket to any part of the country.

They had argued that rather than zoning the ticket, competence should be given priority in the choice of the presidential candidate.

“We have to make a choice either we want to practice democracy the way it should be practised or the way it is being practised, or we define democracy according to our own whims and caprices.

“If we are going to do it the way it is done all over the world you allow the process to continue, it is through the process that you will be able to come up with a candidate that will lead the country,” Babangida said.

But political leaders from the South, especially South-Eastern Nigeria, have consistently insisted that power must rotate to the region after the two terms of eight years of President Buhari in 2023.

They argue that to save the country from crisis, political parties and politicians must allow the South-East to produce the country’s president in 2023.

“There is no region that does not have competent people to preside over Nigeria. If the country can survive the current leadership for close to seven years now, there is no leader that would be as disastrous. The country may be thrown into a serious crisis in the next few weeks if this issue of zoning is not well addressed,” a source, who craved anonymity, said.

Leaders of the apex Igbo social-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, had warned political parties that the region would only support and vote for the party that fielded a presidential candidate from the South-East.

Last week, the group rejected former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s proposed single four-year tenure if elected as president in 2023, in which a candidate from the region would be his running mate, describing Atiku’s proposal as a hoax.

Ohanaeze secretary-general, Okechukwu Isiguzoro, said the remark was a collective disrespect to the people of the South-East, declaring that Igbos will reject the vice-presidential slot, stressing that the region should be allowed to produce a president in 2023.

Speaking recently in an interview with BusinessDay, Chekwas Okorie, a former national chairman of the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), warned that the two major parties in the South-East were tired of being used and abandoned.

He said it would not accept any position other than the presidency from the two major parties, saying, “We have resolved that any party that gives the presidential ticket to Igbo man in 2023 would get the votes of Igbos massively across the country and that is our priority ahead of the 2023 election.

“Everything looks favourable for the South to be considered for the APC ticket. But when you now talk about the South, the Yoruba’s have had their turn when Obasanjo ruled for eight years, after that we had Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan tenure, we know that Jonathan moved on to rule for six years.

“So, it is only the South-East and, for the interest of equity, it is appropriate that the region gets the president slot in 2023. But the way I am seeing it, the PDP may not zone the presidency to the South-East in 2023.”

Similar sentiment has been shared in the South-West among some political leaders who say that the region deserved to produce Buhari’s successor.

“It is the Yoruba turn to rule after Buhari; I know power would be zoned back to the South, but I don’t agree when you say it is South-East time. I don’t see APC giving the ticket to someone from that region,” a chieftain of the APC said.

In the meantime, it is apparent the two major parties are playing a hide-and-seek game on each other in terms of where their presidential ticket would be zoned.

Impeccable sources within the two leading parties indicate that despite efforts from several top party leaders for the presidential ticket to be zoned to a particular region, it may be thrown open for anyone interested to contest.

In the last few months, several individuals have publicly declared their interest to vie for the nation’s number one seat in the two major parties, some of the aspirants are: Bola Ahmed Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State, Anyim Pius Anyim, former Senate president, Samuel Ohuabunwa and Kingsley Moghalu former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), among others.

However, observers say that for the sake of equity and fairness, to give everyone a sense of belonging it is important that regions that had not produced a president since the return to democracy in 1999 should be given a chance.

Such a view was shared by Adelaja Adeoye, former national publicity secretary of the Action Democratic Party (ADP), noting that it would be unjust to continue to deny the South-East and North-Central the presidency when other regions had their chance to rule.

According to Adeoye, “Our focus should be on character, the capacity and competency of the person. However, one of the attributes can be found in any zone. For the fact that Buhari has stayed for eight years and the North-West have ruled, Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan also ruled, meaning that the South-East have not been given opportunity in Nigeria.

“All the actors must calm down and give South-East and North-Central a chance to rule the country. What we do today would come back and wait for us tomorrow, so that we can move the country forward.”