A report ran by the Daily Trust and some social media the other day said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is considering zoning the 2023 Presidential ticket to the North. According to the report, there is a high likelihood that the PDP will pick its presidential candidate for the 2023 elections from the Northern part of the country as stakeholders are set to zone the Chairmanship position of the party to the South.
It was said that the party, during its 92nd National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting at the weekend, announced that the party will arrive at a zoning formula for the National Working Committee (NWC) at a meeting billed for September 9.
This, the report added, comes as the struggles for political power among the political gladiators hot up ahead of the party’s national convention slated for October 30 and 31. Expectantly, it is at the October convention that the PDP will ratify the zoning of 2023 political offices.
Those already pushing for the Presidential ticket are: former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar; former Governors of Jigawa and Kano States, Sule Lamido and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso; former Senate President, Bukola Saraki; Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, among others. These are all Fulani.
For the chairmanship, Daily Trust, had reported that a former Military Governor of Ondo State, Chief Olabode George; the embattled National Chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus; former PDP candidate for Ondo State governorship election, Mr. Eyitayo Jegede; Deputy National Chairman (North), Senator Suleiman Nazif.
Others include: former Governor of Osun State, Ọlagunsoye Oyinlọla; former Kaduna State governor and one time interim chairman of the party, Senator Ahmed Makarfi; Mr Jimi Agbaje, governorship candidate in Lagos; former governor of Gombe State, Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo and former South-West National Vice Chairman, Dr Eddy Olafeso. They, according to the report, are eyeing the seat.
The paper had written, “Support for the chairmanship candidates is said to be informed by zoning configurations in the party with contenders from the North supporting Southern aspirants for the party’s leadership while those with ambition in the South are pushing for the Chairmanship to be zoned to the North.
However, it was reliably gathered that the wind is presently in favour of the emergence of the chairman of the party from the Southwest zone, while the presidency will be zoned to the North.
Advancing the reasons for his argument, the PDP stalwart said, “We have seen the performance of the current administration that is being run by a Northerner.
“Northerners are yearning to have another chance not only to redeem their image but to send a signal and make people believe that is not the best hand they have”.
Indeed, the news report, if it is actually the thinking any credible PDP sanatorium, is not only frustrating and twinkling to the ear, but distressing to the heart. It is idiotic and nasty to think that PDP will descend to level of stupidity to zone the Presidency to the North or to any Fulani after the damage the Fulani have inflicted on Nigeria and Nigerians since 2015.
President Muhammadu Buhari is a Fulani. His government has not only witnessed deaths of hundreds of innocent Nigerians in all strata, but has presided over the displacement of millions of them, many internally displaced persons (IDP’s) camps. The economy is devastated, the Naira has surrendered to the US Dollar at the rate of N530 per Dollar. Social life has come to zero as insecurity has become wide spread.
Life in Nigeria is cheat. Killings have become daily occurrence. Death means nothing to an average Nigerian. Terrorists have been renamed bandits to give it a brand that the international community will accept. Thousands of them are being set free and even recruited into the military and security forces in the despicable argument that they have repented.
Foodstuffs are at the rooftops, hospitals are closed as doctors are on strike while some take flight to Saudi Arabia and other nations which are medically and socially friendly. Accusations of Islamisation of the country are rife; yet the government continues in its perceived entrenchment of a particular religion by its audacious quest to grab lands for the Fulanis. Today in Nigeria, Fulani militias in the camouflage of herdsmen kidnap, rape and kill, with reckless abandon with none being arrested or prosecuted.
This is the today’s Nigeria where a Northern politician is at the helm of affairs. This is the same country the likes of Atiku Abubakar; former Governors of Jigawa and Kano States, Sule Lamido and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso; Bukola Saraki; Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, among others are jostling to rule. They are all Fulani.
With all these killings, none of them have come out to condemn them including the wanton destruction of innocent lives by these blood thirty Fulani. Yet one moron in Rivers State is bullying everybody in order to play the second fiddle as Vice President in 2023 by massively supporting these narcissists. Are these people out of their heads? To them it doesn’t matter that an Igbo or a Southeasterner has not occupied that position before.
In a saner clime, a group that shows serious signs of good management of business and industry should have been begged to take over the headship of the country to lead the country out of the woods. Let me ask again: what would people like Atiku Abubakar, Sule Lamido, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso; Bukola Saraki; Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, be giving to the Nigerian economy and indeed Nigerians that they have not provided over the years?
With their imbecilic thinking and vicious posturing/maneuvering, they assume that they will pull the rug off the feet of some of us to take what does not belong to them in 2023. What have they done to stop the senseless killings and near collapse of the nation run by a Fulani? Their plan is nauseating. Their thinking is nonsensical and actually a stupid way of saying the North is superior and can at any time ride roughshod over the rest of us, the Southerners.
Atiku Abubakar is aging so also are Sule Lamido and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Why won’t Atiku sponsor and support a young Southeasterner, Peter Obi or any other in the zone to restore the glory of Nigeria if he still believes in this geographical space called Nigeria? What argument do they have to run for the Presidency in 2023? What moral justification do they have to seat as President when a Northerner and even a Fulani leaves in 2023? Atiku Abubakar, Sule Lamido, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso; Bukola Saraki; Aminu Waziri Tambuwal should bury their heads in shame. Who the hell do they think they are?
Curiously, former President Olusegun Obansajo, an old political horse, is in the game. President Olusegun Obasanjo, who tore his PDP membership card in 2015, in a fit of anger in order to announce his exit from the party, is reported to be pushing for Oyinlola from the Southwest to emerge as the next PDP National Chairman. How on earth should Obasanjo support such absurdity?
Though he (Obasanjo) has not announced his rejoining the PDP, party leaders still defer to him, with many of them, including the embattled Secondus, visiting him at different times. The likes of Obasanjo are those who would quiescence in the homestead while the she goat delivers in tethers. An Igbo adage condemns such unsteady character and sees such people as unfit to adorn the cap of statesmanship.
This is why Governor Nyesom Wike, a man of dithering behaviour, has suddenly begun a self-imposed war against Prince Uche Secondus, the suspended National Chairman of PDP. If it were the turn of the North, all the politicians from that flank would have closed ranks and fought as a big family to restore the Presidency to the region. It happened during former President Jonathan’s bid for a second term.
The PDP should zone the Chairmanship to the North and battle for the Presidency in 2023. The argument that the North wants to redeem their battered reputation in the eight-year of rule of Buhari is dull and credulous. Where were they all these while? Is it still late to advise Muhammadu Buhari to make some positive amendments to brighten the image of the Fulani?
Even the argument that the North still has four years left is dim. Some Northerners are advancing the position that the presidency should return to the North in 2023 because the successor to President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 should have been a Northern candidate and that Jonathan took the Northern slot at that time. Now, which zone has been in the helm of affairs since Nigeria’s Independence in 1960? Except Obasanjo, all the military Heads of States that ruled this country are of the Northern extraction.
Even at that, has the eight years of Muhammadu Buhari not invalidated that proposition? Obasanjo’s eight years and Jonathan’s four give the South 12 years, while Buhari’s eight years and Umaru Musa Yar’Adua four years equally give the North 12 years. So, is it not the turn of the South? And in coming to the South, the Southeast which has not enjoyed that position since Independence shouldn’t it be allowed to produce the President of Nigeria in 2023.
So, PDP stakeholders should shine their eyes and bear this in mind: that if the party must win the 2023 Presidency, the stakeholders must nominate a Southeasterner as the party’s flag bearer. Nigerians are fed up with the Fulani; therefore another Fulani gearing up to take over from his kinsman is unacceptable to us.
The gladiators that will slug it out at the party’s National Convention slated for October 30 and 31, 2021 should do the needful: elect a Northerner as the National Chairman of PDP and leave the Presidential ticket open for a Southerner, in fact, a Southeasterner to pick.Uche Nwosu is a two time Shell Petroleum PLC award winner in the year 2000;
He won the Shell Award on Investigative Journalism and Environmental Cleanliness.
