In the recent past, I have had to be drawn into a number of media interviews on the desirability of zoning political offices and the agitations for a president of Igbo extraction in 2023. Over the weekend, I spoke on this issue on Democracy Today on the Africa Independent Television and was also on The Podium, the current affairs programme of Love 104.5 FM, Abuja on Monday, March 29, 2021. As a political scientist and prominent member of Nigeria’s civil society I believe strongly in equity, justice and fair-play. I am also a strong advocate of inclusive governance.
What is zoning? According to Oxford Reference: A Dictionary of African Politics, “Zoning is a political practice in Nigeria under which political parties agree to split their presidential and vice-presidential candidates between the North and South of the country and also to alternate the home area of the president between the North and South of the country. The principle of zoning is designed to ensure that neither the North nor the South of the country is ever permanently excluded from power and that no one party is seen to only represent one part of the country. The notion of zoning was first introduced in the Second Republic, following the Biafran Civil War of 1967–70. In a bid to ease interethnic tensions following the conflict, the National Party of Nigeria began to operate a zoning system to select party officials. Later, during a National Constitutional Conference that was convened following the annulment of the 1993 elections and the takeover of power by General Sani Abacha, a number of prominent leaders advocated rotating the presidency between the country’s six geopolitical zones (North-Central, North-East, North-West, South-East, South-South, and South-West). Although the principle received wide support, the proposal was rejected in favour of a simpler process of rotating the executive between the North and South.”
Zoning of political offices is a desideratum for inclusive governance in Nigeria. Though not expressly stated in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, however, the closest I see in our national law is the principle of federal character. Section 14 (3) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, states as follows: “The composition of the government of the federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government or in any of its agencies.”
Subsection 4 of the section 14 states that “The composition of the government of a state, a local government council, or any of the agencies of such government or council and the conduct of the affairs of the government or council or such agencies shall be carried out in such manner as to recognise the diversity of the people within its area of authority and the need to promote a sense of belonging and loyalty among all the peoples of a federation.”
But for zoning and the federal character principle, it would have been possible to have dominance of persons of the same tribe and religion holding political offices across the country. With the observance of zoning principle right from the First Republic, it is not possible to have the president and the vice president coming from the same geopolitical zone. If the president is from the North, the Vice President will be from the South. If the president is a Muslim as currently is the case, the vice president will be a Christian. This is a similar practice in the states except where there is a dominant religion as is the case in some northern states. However, where there is no religious balancing, there is usually geographical balancing.
While it is already a given that political power will oscillate between the North and the South and as it can be seen, some Northern governors such as Malam Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State and Prof. Babagana Zulum of Borno State have called for the preservation of this agelong practice by dominant political parties in Nigeria. While the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party, which are the two dominant political parties in Nigeria at present, may agree to zone the presidential seat to the Southern region as a whole, there is likely to be acrimonious contestation for the slot among the three geopolitical zones making up the region, namely the South-South, the South-East and the South-West. This is where my appeal for political elite consensus to further zone the presidential seat to the South East comes in.
The South-East geopolitical zone is made up of the Igbo race. This ethnic group has been politically marginalised. It is the only zone in the country with five states. While the North-West has seven states and the other zones have six states apiece, the South-East has five namely, Abia, Ebonyi, Enugu, Anambra and Imo. Economically and intellectually, the Igbo people are giants even as many see them as political Lilliputians. The Igbo are very daring entrepreneurs who mostly ply their trade outside of their homestead. Their economic investments are huge in Lagos, Abuja, Rivers, Kano and many of the city centres. There is a saying that anywhere in the country where you don’t find an Igbo residing or doing business is not fit for human habitation.
For some time now, there have been separatist agitations for self-determination largely driven by Igbo youths. Ab initio, there was the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra under the leadership of Chief Ralph Uwazuruike. More recently, there is the Indigenous People of Biafra movement led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. These groups have held countless mass protests citing the marginalisation and discrimination of the Federal Government of Nigeria as the core reason for wanting out of the federation. This feeling of political alienation is reminiscent of how the Yoruba people felt after the unjust annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Groups such as National Democratic Coalition, the Pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere and the Oodua Peoples Congress, rose up against the military junta of Babangida and Abacha and vehemently demanded Oduduwa Republic.
The strident agitation of Afenifere and the OPC led to elite consensus reached in 1998 to compensate the Yoruba people for the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by Bashorun MKO Abiola. The Nigerian political elite decided to make up for the Yoruba loss of 1993 by agreeing to field only Yoruba candidates for presidential election of 1999. Thus, while there were three political parties namely, Alliance for Democracy, All Peoples Party and Peoples Democratic Party, the AD and APP decided to go into political alliance and fielded only one presidential candidate in the person of the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation and Finance Minister, Chief Olu Falae, while the PDP went for former Head of State, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. At the end of the election, Obasanjo won and did two terms as elected president from 1999 to 2007. Right now, another Yoruba man in the person of Yemi Osinbajo is the Vice President, since 2015. To my own mind, the Yoruba have been more than adequately compensated. The South-South region has also had Dr. Goodluck Jonathan serving first as Vice President from 2007 – 2010 and becoming acting president after the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2010 before going ahead to contest and win the presidential election of 2011. Thus, the Ijaws who are predominantly in the South-South geopolitical zone have also been able to produce the president of Nigeria.
For me, the elite consensus of 1998 can be reenacted ahead of 2023 this time in favour of the Igbo. If only the two dominant political parties, the APC and the PDP, can reach a consensus on this, then it will become a done deal. I am not unaware of the presidential ambition of Turaki Adamawa and PDP chieftain, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, as well as that of former Lagos State governor and APC leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. These are prominent and eminent elder statesmen whom I believe can be persuaded to back down on their 2023 presidential ambitions in order to pave the way for someone from the South-East geopolitical zone. It is all in the spirit of equity, justice and fair-play and in order to give the Igbo a sense of political inclusion. It is important for the Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, to put its house in order and start earnest political negotiation and intense lobbying of political heavyweights across the country.
Follow me on Twitter @jideojong
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