2023: Zoning Is Not The Solution – Atiku Abubakar

Former Nigeria’s Vice President, Abubakar Atiku, says zoning is not the solution to Nigeria’s leadership crisis.

Gatekeepers News reports that the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 general elections and former Nigeria’s Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has dismissed the debate on the zoning of the party’s presidential ticket as the solution to Nigeria’s leadership crisis.

The Southern Governors Forum at their meeting on Thursday, 16th September 2021, held in the Government House, Enugu, Enugu State said that the next President of Nigeria must come from the Southern part of Nigeria in line with politics of equity, justice and fairness.

The PDP has zoned the chairmanship ticket to the North by the Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi- led committee last week. The party presidential ticket, going by convention, should go to the South.

Atiku said that the zoning of the 2023 presidential ticket has never been the cause of the country’s problem, nor will it be the solution.

Atiku said this while addressing NEC members at the 94th National Executive Committee (NEC) of the PDP on Thursday in Abuja, FCT.

Atiku said, “The PDP has the right to determine its rules on how its party should be governed. The people of Nigeria also have the right to determine who governs them.

“Where the president comes from has never been the problem of Nigeria, neither will it be the solution. There is no such thing as the president from Southern Nigeria or the president from Northern Nigeria. There is only one president from Nigeria, by Nigeria and for Nigeria.”

Atiku noted that the 1999 conference that led to the emergence of Olusegun Obasanjo was birthed out of the injustice meted out on M.K.O Abiola during the June 12 election and was agreed by all who later went to establish some of the political parties the country has today.

“This is to show you that Nigeria has a sense of fairness.

“In 2003, all the PDP governors met at the Villa, (Ahmed) Makarfi was there and said they were not going to support President Obasanjo, that I should run.

“I now referred them to the resolution of the NEC that said power should remain in the southwest for eight years, then I turned it down, and we moved on,” he added.