By Donald Ugwu
For a long time now the polity has been awash with the annual rehash of agitations for political inclusion of the country’s geopolitical divides on whose turn it is to produce the country’s president in 2023.
In the past days, prominent politicians have been declaring their intentions to run for their party’s tickets for the exulted Presidency of Nigeria.
A former Vice President under Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight years administration and the 2019 presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar, recently formally declared his intention to be the party’s presidential candidate.
Barely three days after his declaration on March 24, his running mate in the 2019 polls and former Anambra governor, Peter Obi, also indicated interest to seek the party’s nod for the presidential ticket.
Obi made his intention known while addressing some traditional rulers in Anambra while Atiku was at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.
This is as the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was on March 26 at a convention seeking to finalise its consensus arrangement for its National Working Committee (NWC) offices.
After the NWC ratification convention, APC’s candidates for the presidential ticket would continue their horse-trading to ascertain who bears the party’s flag among contending candidates from virtually all the country’s political divides.
On January 24, no fewer than 1,000 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) besieged the secretariats of the two domineering political parties, the APC and the PDP demanding that the nation’s next president should be a southerner.
Protesting under the aegis of the Coalition of Civil Society Groups (CCSG) its president Bassey Williams demanded that both parties should nominate southern candidates as their flag bearers in the 2023 presidential elections.
A political school of thought argues that the ceding of the slots would engender national peace and integration and save the country from instability. They also posited that the idea would engender fairness.
Some of the placards the group displayed read: “please respect power rotation; power rotation is not negotiable”; “we support a united Nigeria, one nation great people”, “the southern president now; and southern president for national unity”.
The question of who occupies the presidency hits an all-time high whenever the major national election is around the corner. Curiously, the 1999 Constitution, now in use did not in any way mention power rotation in any of its provisions.
The constitution, giving credence to the choice of democracy as the preferred system of government, would pinion itself if it jettisons the very tenets of democracy, which is equal opportunities, to take in rotation as an issue.
The constitution says that to lead Nigeria one only needs to be a citizen, attain 35 years of age, obtain a minimum of secondary school certificate or its equivalent and belong to a political party and such party must sponsor him or her.
However, Nigerians, knowing full well the need for accommodation, devised an unofficial, but nifty, way of making electoral offices move around by introducing the rotation principle.
Some states have adopted rotation over time. One of such is Enugu, which has done two uninterrupted circles of rotation among the three senatorial districts: Jim Nwobodo (East); C.C. Onoh (West) Okwesilieze Nwodo (North); Chimaroke Nnamani (East); Sullivan Chime (West); and incumbent Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (North).
The late second republic Vice-President Dr Alex Ekwueme, while leading the design for a national political movement called G34, which metamorphosed into the PDP created what is today known as the six geo-political zones.
The party won the Presidency in the third republic 1999 election and many of its candidates became governors as the country transited from many years of military rule to a civilian administration 1999.
Ekwueme had postulated then that the nation was carved into two predominant North and South, with each having three distinct zones of North East, North West, and North Central on the one hand and South East, South West, and South-South on the other.
The late vice president’s idea, accepted by his team, was that power should rotate between the North and South each time there was transition and that on each occasion the part that has not produced one should have a slot when it returns to its primary zone.
PDP demonstrated leadership of the new arrangement after the late Umaru Yar’Adua from the north emerged as President after President Olusegun Obasanjo of the South had completed his two tenures of four years each. By design rather than the default, for each administration, the Vice-Presidential slot went to the other zone.
After Yar’Adua’s death, his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan mounted the saddle to complete his 4years after which he did another term for the South-South zone. Although Jonathan ran for a second term he lost, incidentally, to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner.
If the rotation principle is maintained, experts say the next Nigerian president who will emerge in 2023, at the end of Buhari’s eight years of the rule should come from the South.
But there are fears that for personal and ethnocentric gains, some politicians are scheming to truncate the rotation policy in other to promote their political and somewhat ethnocentric interests even as many aspirants have showed up to grab the presidential tickets of their various parties.
From the ruling APC, former Lagos governor, Bola Tinubu, Gov. Dave Umahi of Ebonyi, former Abia governor. Orji Uzor Kalu, has emerged. Some individuals, such as Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, although has not made formal declarations, are being prompted by loyalists to run, same for the serving governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele, whose posters dot many parts of Abuja. Emefiele, for now, is not a card-carrying member of any party.
Some other candidates even have their posters dotted in major Nigerian cities unchallenged them, thus creating the impression that they might have an interest. In the PDP the aspiration of Atiku Abubakar is being orchestrated by his loyalists ahead of his formal declaration.
Media guru, Chief Raymond Dokpesi, leading Atiku Abubakar Campaign Technical Committee, took to major electoral stakeholders to lobby for its candidate. In Umuahia and some of the heartlands of the South East, the group met with PDP stakeholders and told them to jettison the idea of a president from their stock until 2027 to pave way for Atiku in 2023.
Other politicians who have declared interest in PDP are erstwhile Secretary to the Government of the Federation and former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, and the Delta-born Orefo Anyichie. A Diaspora Nigerian and President of the Nigeria community in Japan, Chief Kennedy Nnaji, also declared intention for the presidency, although without stating under which party.
There are speculations that Atiku’s candidacy may not sell while his loyalists will thereafter back his running mate in the 2019 race, former Governor Obi for the ticket. At an event for his declaration in Enugu in the first week of January, some PDP leaders agreed to support Anyim for his party’s ticket.
A 10-point resolution issued at the end of the meeting was signed by Sen. Theodore Orji, former Abia governor, who also chaired the session, and Chief Duru-Iheoma, SAN, former chairman of PDP in Imo.
The document appealed to the PDP “in the interest of equity, justice, and harmonious national cohesion to zone the presidential ticket to the Southern zones of the country and the South East in particular.
It further stated that: “the people of the South-East geopolitical zone have earned the right to occupy the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023 on account of their eminent qualifications and overwhelming contributions to the development of all parts of the federation through the years”.
The participants at the forum, therefore, “further reiterate that the choice of a South-East citizen as the presidential candidate of the party in 2023 will guarantee to every Nigerian a sense of equity, justice, and inclusion in the management of the affairs of the nation. They also stated that: “in our view, this is the best way of ensuring that we build a nation that leaves no one or group behind.’’
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Such passion and sentiment expressed by the Anyim group are marched in gusto by every group propagating the interest of its geopolitical presidency claim.
Such is the case with consultative meetings recently midwived by former Senate President Bukola Saraki, Sokoto governor. Aminu Tambuwal and his Bauchi State counterpart, Bala Mohammed. They contend that the 2023 presidency should be zoned to the North.
Despite the permutations, observers say the crux of the matter remains “where does the pendulum swing that will appease the yearnings of no fewer than 200 million citizens“?
Some protagonists of rotation often mention the use of `quota system’, `disadvantaged area’, and sundry legislations supporting balancing in the Federal Government employment scheme. Antagonists argue there the zoning arrangement does not reflect a true spirit of giving and taking, insisting that every political office must be fought for through the ballot box.
Nigerians in 1993 looked at the pedigree of the then-presidential candidacy of Bashorun MKO Abiola when they voted massively for him and his fellow Muslim running mate Ambassador Babagana Kingibe.
That election was truncated by the military. But by the time democracy returned to the country after about 16 years, the electorate leveraged on the injustice meted out to the South West and picked Obasanjo against fellow tribesman, Chief Olu Falae, who ran under the only known opposition party, the Alliance for Democracy (AD). (NAN Features).
