PDP’s decision on 2023 presidential ticket amounts to betrayal, says HURIWA

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has described the failure to zone its 2023 presidential ticket to the South as a monumental fraud and betrayal of trust of the party’s members in the south.

HURIWA in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said it is also fraudulent and utterly self-centered for anyone to argue that zoning of offices during elections by political parties is not constitutionally enshrined.

The group stated that the larger and associated legal implications of section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution which obliges government to distribute appointments to reflect the Federal character of Nigeria is same and identical with the agreement by the political parties to rotate political offices between the North and the South of Nigeria for equity, peace, unity and integration of all segments of the society.

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HURIWA said politicians must not be allowed to flout the ethics of governance by saying one thing in day time but to quickly deny same at night because according to the Rights group, politics is not a criminal enterprise but a career that is guided by morality, the laws, conventions and practices that have become precedents.

HURIWA maintained that rotation of the offices of President, governors down to even Councilor’s positions, is a practice that has been mainstreamed by the political parties like All Progressives Congress, and the Peoples Democratic Party.

It accused the Peoples Democratic Party of gambling with the intelligence of the Southern Nigerian ethnicities by suddenly refusing to give life to the time tested and time honoured agreement of the founding members of one of Nigeria’s largest political groupings only because it became imperative that South East of Nigeria is the most deserving of the office of President of Nigeria.

The Rights group said what the Peoples Democratic party has done by dashing the hopes of their members and the good people of Southern Nigeria by throwing the Presidency open to all zones is not much different from what scammers with wonder banks do to their unsuspecting customers who are usually deceived, lured with sugarcoated promises of multilayered interest rates to invest their assets and cash only for the promoters to close shop suddenly at night and disappear into thin air.