The Chairman, Planning Committee, South West Agenda for Asiwaju Tinubu 2023 (SWAGA ’23), Senator Dayo Adeyeye, has said that President Muhammadu Buhari would not have emerged in 2015 if there was micro-zoning of the presidency.
Adeyeye spoke against the backdrop of concerns that his group’s rooting for 2023 Tinubu presidency clashed with the clamour for Igbo presidency.
The former Minister of State for Works said that the existing zoning arrangement for the presidency specified rotation of power between North and South, and not microzoning to geopolitical zones.
He said that if the zoning arrangement was done by geopolitical zones, President Muhammadu Buhari would not have emerged in 2015 since it would not have been the turn of the North-West zone after Umaru Yar’Adua’s election in 2007. Buhari hails from the same state as the late Yar’Adua.
Adeyeye, who is a former Senate spokesman, said he was not against Igbo presidency, but explained that its proponents would have to struggle like everyone else to realise their ambitions.
“Politics is never served ala carte. You need to struggle for political power. Now, some people believe there should be zoning and there are others who think there shouldn’t be zoning of public offices. I think those opposed to zoning are not honest enough. There should be zoning. With what we have, we can zone to geopolitical zones, states, local governments, wards and even villages.
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“The kind of consensus leaders in this country have is that the presidency should rotate between the North and South not minding whoever gets it in the zones. We have not micro-zoned to geopolitical zones for it to rotate among the sub-zones in the geopolitical zones.
“We may have that in the future but not now. Perhaps, a time will come when we would say it should rotate among the states. There may be a time we can decide to do away with zoning but not now.
“What we have now is a kind of consensus for rotation between North and South. That is a very simple formula because when you go too far by micro-zoning to geopolitical zones, there could be a lot of tension.
“If we had micro-zoned to geopolitical zones, Buhari wouldn’t have emerged because people would have said Yar’Adua also hailed from Katsina State.
“Right now, there are even people clamouring for former President Goodluck Jonathan, who is a southerner. Since it is coming to the South, any of the geopolitical zones in the South has the right to aspire to the presidency: South-West, South-East and South-South have the right to present candidates for the election.
“We can’t have a situation where a group of people would go to someone’s house to offer the presidency to him. What I am saying is that the South-East people have the right to contest, just as we in the South-West have the right.
“The South-South people also have the right. It is the prerogative of all Nigerians to choose whoever comes out from the South. The person who will emerge won’t be a South-West President, South-East President and South-South President but a Nigerian President.”