Former Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, says the zoning arrangement between the North and South is meant to ensure national cohesion, inclusion, equity, peace, and justice in Nigeria.
Okechukwu said this in Enugu on Tuesday, while responding to questions from journalists, on the recent public statement credited to Atiku that zoning is “self-defeating.”
He dismissed Atiku’s recent claim as a classic case of self-denial, which does not subscribe to the truth and realism.
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“How can one of the foremost beneficiaries of the zoning convention suddenly deny its profound significance in promoting national cohesion, inclusion, equity, peace, and justice?” he queried.
Okechukwu, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said that “if there were no zoning arrangement, could Atiku have become vice president?
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“Has he forgotten why he stormed out of the PDP presidential primary process in 2014 and joined us in APC, after President Goodluck Jonathan emerged as the party’s candidate?”
Commenting further on Atiku’s statement that how does a southern opposition unseat a sitting southern president, Okechukwu described the remark as regrettably an identity politics, the very tendency the zoning convention was designed to minimise.
He noted that such rhetoric is least expected from a statesman, and criticised Atiku’s argument that by 2027, the south would have held presidential power for approximately 18 years, compared to about 10 years for the north.
Okechukwu said that the statement reflects selective amnesia, as it ignored the historical reality that the north has presided over the affairs of the country for more than four decades, since after independence in 1960.
The APC chieftain noted that equity cannot be discussed in fragments or based on convenient arithmetic.
Okechukwu finally stated that he was yet to locate the “realism” in the political calculations of Atiku’s claims.
