2023: Niger Delta group seeks legislation on power rotation

National Coordinator of the group, Mr Emmanuel Ogba, made the call on Saturday in Port Harcourt. He urged the National Assembly to strive towards making legislations aimed at legalising political zoning of offices in the country especially for the office of the President and Commander in Chief. Ogba also called on the youth and politicians in the Northern part of the country to begin preparations towards galvanizing support for a Southern President come 2023.

He expressed the opinion that if the constitution was amended to accommodate political zoning of offices that crisis and desperation that usually characterised presidential elections in the country would reduce.

"By entrenching zoning in the nation's constitution, the presidential election will be less expensive and the height of desperation that is always witnessed during presidential elections will have been drastically reduced," he said.

The coordinator also revealed that some political parties, like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have had zoning in its internal agreement adding that the measure had to a large extent boosted the party's internal democracy.
According to him, the PDP zoning module in the last general election to a large extent helped reduce internal political crises that in time past bedevilled the party.

He appealed to members of the PDP, particularly those from the northern part of the country, to always embrace zoning irrespective of political interests. Reacting to a recent statement credited to Prof. Ango Abdulahi accusing former President Goodluck Jonathan of discarding the zoning system, Ogba argued that such criterion should not be allowed to truncate the zoning formula.

"After the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, NDYC played a major role by advocating for a power shift to the north which was eventually actualised.

"By 2023 when President Muhammadu Buhari would be serving out his second term of four years, we feel that the right thing is to call on particularly the youth from the north and influential politicians to support the South produce the next President of Nigeria," he said.
[NAN]