By Aiyeku Timothy
Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has advised against the idea of zoning of political positions if the country must develop.
He made this claim at the Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja on Wednesday.
The Kaduna State governor insisted that no country makes progress with such an arrangement as he claims that qualified persons should be given equal opportunity to contest for political positions.
In Nigeria, political offices especially the presidency are rotated on the basis of geographical zones. With President Muhammadu Buhari coming from the North, there are already calls for the presidency to return to the South ahead of 2023.
This is against El-Rufai’s wish as he argues that leaders should not be selected by zones as this “will lead to inefficiency”.
He said: “There is no country in the world that has made progress in the last 50 years that rotates its leaders. I think if we move away from this fixation about distribution to selecting or picking the best person to get the job done… when the job is done, everybody benefits.
“Right now, we are distributing this and we are not making any progress because the focus is on distribution.”
In August 2019, the governor made same position known in a prologue titled, ‘Defeating a Determined Incumbent – The Nigerian Experience’.
According to him, the zoning of political offices is a barrier to political equality and Nigeria cannot afford to continue on the same path.
He said, “Even with our success in the 2015 elections, there is room for improvement. Barriers to political equality, such as our seemingly entrenched though informal rule for zoning candidacies according to regions of origin, need to be de-emphasised and ultimately abandoned in favour of an emphasis on qualification, competence and character.
“The financing of parties, candidates and campaigns remains opaque.”
Contradicting his early statement, a year after, in August 2020, El-Rufai gave his backing to the South when he spoke to BBC Hausa as he stated that no northerner should contest for the presidency in 2023 to calm nerves and speculations about his interest in running for the office.
His words: “In Nigerian politics, there is a system of rotation, in which everyone agrees that if the north rules for eight years, the south will rule for eight years. That is why I came out and said that after President Buhari has been in office for eight years, no northerner should run for office. Let the Southerners also have eight years.
“If you look at how I am, I don’t take anyone to work with me for the zone he came from. The eligibility I look at is if who is entrusted to the public will hold it properly. It has been said that I have loved the presidency since I was a minister in the FCT. This is nonsense. I do not want the Nigerian presidency. God gives power, whether you like it or not, if he wants it, He will give it to you, but I have never sought the presidency of Nigeria, no one can say I have ever sought it”.
