From Okwe Obi, Abuja
A former Chairman of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Dr Sam Amadi, has drummed support for the South East to produce the next president in 2023.
Amadi, who lectures at Baze University, Abuja, told journalists yesterday in Abuja, that the South East is the only zone that has suffered exclusion and marginalisation since 1999.
The Director of Abuja School of Political and Social Thoughts, argued that it was unfair and uncharitable for political pundits or commentators to suggest that the president should come from the South, stressing that the South as a whole, has not suffered any political damage like the South East region.
He contended further that zoning is an affirmative action, extraction from normal politics and a child of necessity which would heal the pains of the South East region.
“Our view in Abuja school is that there is no need to zone if there is no danger. Zoning is an affirmative action. Zoning is an abstraction from normal politics.
“Our view in Abuja School is that zoning should be zoned to the South East and not the entire South.
“We reject the notion of zoning to the South for the clear reason that the South has suffered no peculiar and aggravated damage of politics in terms of representation vis-á-vis the North.
“Since 1999, the South as a whole has suffered no peculiar or damage in terms of political representation for us to trigger zoning to the South.
“The South East is the only region that has not held presidential power,” he said.
He added that, “we want the 2023 elections to help repair the structural crisis we are having in terms of tendencies of separation and sense of disunity.
“So, in our conversations, we are reviewing how the issue of zoning. We realised that this politics of zoning has taken dangerous turns as a result of response to the last six or years of this administration in which many groups feel marginalised.
“For example, we all know the IPOB phenomenon. Sunday Igboho is undergoing some kind of trial in Benin Republic on account of very strong insurgencies even if it is not physical but rhetorical against the Federal Government.
“We can talk about the militancy in the middle belt groups that, in the past, were not radical in their expression of discontent of the Nigerian state.
“Of course, the well known case in the Niger Delta; it does not need to be rehashed.
“What this point to whether by design or default, we have come to a point where there is so much contention against the Nigerian state.
“The question is; how do we rescue the country from the challenges of the state in terms of breakup, violence and conflicts?
“We now stake that zoning should be properly understood. Ideally, election should be a competition and in democracy people should be allowed to vote for whoever they want.
“So, our view is that the ordinary way the Nigerian election can go as it has been in the past since in the First Republic is through zoning. Some of them have regional strengths.
“They ran election universally. We did not have the notion of zoning. The notion of zoning grew as a response largely during the June 12 election because of what happened to Chief M.K Abiola when his clear mandate was, unfortunately annulled.”
