The National Party of Nigeria invented the whole idea of zoning in Nigeria. It is an invention which many are not ready to give it credit.
It all started this way. As it prepared for its primaries in 1978, the party announced that only politicians from the defunct Northern Region were eligible to contest for the office of the President. The powers behind that party did not, and have never given reason for that decision. However it is easy to conclude that in a country brimming ambitious, sometimes unruly politicians, only one strategy could have worked in bringing everybody into line; The big stick.
Still, this policy of reserving the presidency to the north even as it gave the other parties particularly those from the south room to raise a lot of dust against it appear to have worked for the party at the time . The party eventually won the presidential race in 1979 regardless.
The closest rival of the NPN, the UPN managed to maintain a strict martial like discipline among its ranks produced its Presidential candidate from the south and his vice-presidential candidate also from the south. The fact both were Christians is was widely considered to be a strategic political blunder which lay the party open to all types of allegations. Certainly it cost the party a sizeable number of votes leading her defeat in 1979.
The NPN strategy did not only zone the presidency. It zoned also the National Chairman of the party, (South West) the Vice Presidency, (South East) the Senate President (South, South) and the House leadership (North central) ceded temporary to the NPP because of the NPN NPP Accord and these created wide support bases attracting followership from all corners of the country. The UPN remain boxed in one corner of the country.
The democratic experience that bought in an NPN president was very brief – 1979 to 1983. The military took over power at the end of that year.
The next democratic experiment which fiddled with the zoning policy of zoning is this present one that came in 1999. When the military decided to hand over power to civilians, the politicians of the north resolved that only the South West would present Presidential candidates. This was so because it believed the zone got a raw deal under the military in the aborted presidential election on June 12 1993 which Chief Moshood Abiola a Yoruba of the South West won fair and square.
General Abubakar Abdulasam who eventually took over as a Head of state after some tragic deaths was able to organize a business like transition program which in a matter of months ushered in a new Presidential system. The feeling, spearheaded by northern politicians was that in the spirit of reconciliation and national rebirth, the South and particularly the South West should produce the next president. The two leading political parties, the PDP and the ANPP all featured only southern candidates. That was how the zoning system, invented by the NPN as a novel in-house political arrangement was given a national rebirth. The PDP even wrote it in their constitution that the presidency be rotated between the north and the south. This again was achieved by the use of the big stick.
Some northern politicians in the PDP, like Abubbakar Rimi of Kano protested openly saying zoning was against the principles of democracy to no avail. At the Jos convention of the PDP of 1999, Obasanjo emerged as the party’s candidate and went ahead to win the general election.
Thus with the PDP giving us a president by zoning, our current system was born on the wobbly clay feet of producing a president by allocation. Eventhough this is not inserted in the 1999 constitution, it has become a belief that the office of president should be rotated ala the PDP constitution between the north and the south.
Unfortunately northerners in the PDP feel the party has been unfair in allocating the presidential ticket to them. They point at the fact that Olusegun Obasanjo, a southern, was given the ticket twice(8 years) Goodluck Jonathan, another southerner,(6 years) given the ticket twice while the north was only given the ticket once to Yaradua which resulted to a short lived victory (less than two years).
Such northern politicians of note – Atiku Abubakar, Rabiu Kwankwaso, who worked for southerners to emerge as presidents in the past were miffed when all southern governors held a meeting in Lagos last year and issued a statement that the presidency in 2023 MUST be moved to the south. They have begun to question their fate in a PDP which have after all been after skewed to serve the emergence of southern presidents only.
Already the party has given hint that the Presidency is coming to the south by appointing Iyorchia Ayu a northerner to emerge as their National party chairman. They will not allow the north to hold positions of National Chairman and Presidential candidate.
On the other hand the APC, the ruling party has no such provision in their constitution. Ambitious politicians from the north like the youthful Governor of Kogi state Yahaya Bello has offered himself and is making waves as a presidential hopeful in the 2023 elections. He has by his bold step ruffled powerful figures in the southern wing of the APC who are eying the presidency based on their belief in the ‘turn by turn presidency.’ These time servers Iike Bola Tinubu believe this is their time and do not want to hear of younger names in the APC aspiring for presidency.
But Yahaya Bello is not alone in this political quandary of being shoved aside regardless of competence now facing the APC and Nigeria. Why should a good material like Professor Babagana Zulum, Governor of Borno state for instance be prevented from aspiring for presidency, a position which he has demonstrated that he is eminently qualified all because he is from the north?
Should our country keep operating a system that has led us to the mess we are in today all because we believe in a historically defective tradition of presidency by allocation and not by competence?
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