Atiku reveals why South-East region have failed to produce president or vice president

With less than a year to the 2023 general elections, the race for the presidential tickets of political parties is getting more intense. As political parties strategize towards holding their party primaries, the issue of which of the six geo-political zones in Nigeria will their presidential candidates emerge has been a subject of national discourse.

Equitable zoning of the presidency in the 2023 general elections by the two major political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), is currently one of the most contentious issues in Nigeria today.

Recall that the South-East has since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999 been clamouring for a president of Igbo extraction, and since Nigeria returned to democracy, only the South-East region has yet to produce the President from the southern part of the country.

According to a report by the Daily Post, Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar described the 2023 Presidential election as a very crucial and historical moment for the survival of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He noted that people have not stopped talking about power rotation and zoning.

He said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) invented and formulated the zoning policy, simply because the party wanted every part of this country to have a sense of belonging. He said the south had ruled Nigeria more times than the north since the country returned to democracy.

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The former Vice President was probably referring to eight years each for former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari respectively; five years for former President Goodluck Jonathan and three years for late former president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

He said the South was the only region who has produced the president in the many years of PDP government, and the Southeast has equally given the chance to produced the president or the vice president, but the inability of the PDP to defeat APC in 2015 and 2019, is the main why no Southeast candidates has ever been the vice president.

He said the reason he did not run against his principal’s re-election, former president Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003, was because he wanted to keep the zoning policy of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Atiku said he is not opposed to rotating the presidency and he has paid his dues on the issue of zoning, by rejecting Bola Tinubu as running mate in 2007, when they were members of the Action Congress (AC), and settled for Ben Obi as his running mate due to the conditions Tinubu gave him, and he also chose Peter Obi, a former Anambra State governor, and economist as his running mate in the 2019 general election.

He cautioned the party leaders not to allow the All Progressives Congress (APC) and other parties to force their zoning plan on the party, adding that they have a moral obligation which is inescapable.