Get Guardian on Google
A chieftain of Plateau State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Jonathan Sunday Akuns, has described as abhorrent the recent statement credited to Senate Chief Whip, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, on the zoning of the 2023 presidency.
Kalu had noted that his idea of fairness is that unless the presidential ticket of All Progressives Congress (APC) was zoned to the Southeast it would not matter if the next president comes from Daura in the same Northwest, where President Muhammadu Buhari hails.
But, regretting that nobody, except Governor Yahaya Bello, is talking about the North Central in the presidential equation, Akuns said Kalu’s “piece is a drag on the noble advocacy for restructuring and power devolution in Nigeria along the path of the Swiss model of governance in a federation.”
[ad]
He lamented that the postulation excluded North-Central geopolitical zone of Nigeria from the regions that have not produced an elected President of Nigeria, despite the conspicuous engagement of Governor Bello in the race to the 2023 presidency.
Aguns, a PDP gubernatorial aspirant, stated: “The focus has always been on Southeast and Northeast only. This demonstrates a faulty sense of equity being clamoured by the likes of Atiku Abubakar and Kalu, both persons to have spoken about the zoning of the presidency in Nigeria for an egalitarian Nigerian society.
“The position of Kalu is so abhorrent for him to justify the inclusion of North in 2023 calculations as an option that is equitable; Atiku was fair enough to declare that he will withdraw from the 2023 presidential contest if the zoning of the presidency to the South was explicitly assigned to the Southeast.
“While I squarely blame the leaders of North-Central for their muted stance on the issue, I am disappointed by the lack of prescience by Atiku and Kalu on such an issue of national relevance considering their standing in the scheme of things in national politics.
“Regrettably, the duo portrayed a sense of statesmanship of regional, rather than national stature, thereby diminishing the much needed political esprit de corps for a cohesive federation of Nigeria.”
[ad]
