2023: Why I Do Not Support Zoning- Sowore
Human rights activist, Omoyele Sowore has questioned the rationale behind zoning the presidency as he does not support the idea.
Sowore, a presidential aspirant on the platform of the African Action Congress (AAC), during an interview with Annabel Orji of Kaftan Television, argued that people in regions the presidency was zoned to have barely benefited from such arrangement. He also asked why the concept of zoning does not come into play in matters of corruption and looting of the national treasury.
He cited that President Muhammadu Buhari, a Northerner, has been in power for the past seven years and the North had not profited from it but only became more immersed in insecurity.
He also noted that people from President Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan region did not enjoy the dividends of democracy under their administration.
The activist opined that if power is to be zoned at all, it should be to the Nigerian people who are being oppressed.
He said;
“It is one of the pathetic things we have to deal with in every election cycle, they will just bring in a buzzword that will distract everybody’s attention from the most important quality needed of a leader which is character among other great things.”
He noted that when the ruling elites discovered that would not work, they threw in zoning ” to get people distracted.
“Power has been zoned before to the North, what did Northerners get for it? Insecurity?
Buhari has been in power for a while now, the North where he came from is swamped in insecurity. Obasanjo at one time had power zoned to the south-west, he won the election, during his time couldn’t construct a road from Lagos to Abeokuta.
Jonathan whom everybody said well this is the first time the third-largest ethnic group in Nigeria became president, he was there for five years, what did he do? They were still stealing crude, I hate to use the word stealing.
Nigeria has not benefited from this political ideology. How do you zone the presidency of a country to a particular region? What if there are no competent persons? I’m not saying there are zones with no competent persons but what I’m saying is what if the real competent people are not permitted to become candidates in those places, you end up with the same rotten political class members.
When it is time for corruption or looting, they don’t zone to a region, they don’t say it is the turn of the South-East to take all of Nigeria’s money for the next four years but I will say that if you’re going to zone at all, we must zone power to the oppressed, the class that is always at the receiving end of this badly delivered governance. It is for all of us.”
Sowore, further stated that he does not have confidence in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as he described the 2019 general elections as a selection process.
He continued;
“I participated actively in the 2019 election and I can categorically tell you that there was no election in 2019, it was a selection process and when it was time, they just allocated numbers to people, they allocated me some numbers which are in no way representative of what people who are on the field did for us.
“Later on, they conducted election in Kogi state which people referred to as ‘ta ta ta’, they were shooting and killing people, a woman who belonged to the opposition was burnt alive in her house, that’s not an election, where there’s violence and intimidation, using security agencies to forcefully arrest people and imposing one man, Yahaya Bello on people.”
