By Chekwube Nzomiwu, PhD
The zoning of elective offices is a burning issue at every election cycle in Nigeria. The trend is not different during off-cycle elections. In September and November this year, two off-cycle governorship elections are expected to hold in Edo and neighbouring Ondo State, respectively.
After Edo and Ondo State governorship elections, the next is Anambra State. Although the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is yet to announce the date for the off-cycle 2025 Anambra State Governorship Election, the zoning debate has started raging as usual.
Frankly, it is not surprising to me that the loudest voices so far, are those clamouring for Anambra South Senatorial District to produce the next governor. This is understandable being that the incumbent governor, Prof Charles Soludo of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) is from the South district. As a first term governor, he is constitutionally entitled to contest for a second term.
Nonetheless, other aspirants are gearing up to displace the sitting governor. Until his death in July, Senator Ifeanyi Ubah of the All Progressive Congress (APC) was among the aspirants from the South poised to upstage Soludo. In spite of Ubah’s death, Soludo’s political headache in the South is not over. He still has another formidable opposition in the person of Valentine Ozigbo of the Labour Party (LP).
Outside Anambra South, Soludo equally has a challenger in Sir Paul Chukwuma, a former National Auditor of the ruling APC. Chukwuma hails from Anambra North Senatorial District. He is currently the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the Benue State University.
As expected, the issue of zoning is already on the front burner. Some weeks ago, a group operating under the aegis of Anambra APC Elders Forum declared zoning for governorship election in the state as sacrosanct, stressing that the arrangement must remain as generally agreed by all the political parties.
The group claimed that zoning started during the era of Governor Peter Obi in Anambra State when he presented a zoning arrangement to all stakeholders, including the town unions and traditional rulers who endorsed it. However, the Publicity Secretary of APC in the State, Iyke Oliobi thinks otherwise. Oliobi said the APC did not enter into such an agreement with any other political party in the state.
Besides APC, the contentious zoning is also reverberating in other political parties. In an interview with Vanguard Newspapers recently, a chieftain of LP and former Secretary to the State Government, Oseloka Obaze, declared that the 2025 governorship belongs to Anambra South. Obaze said it was up to the South to find a credible and transformative leader to replace Soludo.
Quoting him, “despite the high promises made by Soludo to transform Anambra into Dubai-Taiwan, the state has regressed in terms of security, quality of life and good governance.”
Having given this background, let me state categorically that I am a firm believer that competence and capacity ought to be placed above parochial and provincial considerations, such as zoning, while selecting leaders. Judging by the Nigerian experience, zoning had more often than not, thrown up clueless and incompetent leaders at different levels of government.
It is divisive and capable of preventing credible citizens from contesting election. My stance on this matter is without prejudice to the fact that I am from Anambra South, which appears to be favoured by both the said APC elders and Oseloka Obaze.
Before I comment on the statement by the APC elders, I have a few posers for Obaze. First, who arrogated to him the powers to declare that the next governorship belongs to Anambra South? When and where was it discussed? If zoning produced Soludo, under who the state has regressed, according to Obaze, why should the next governor be produced through the same process?
Returning back to the APC elders, they claimed that zoning started from Peter Obi when he presented a zoning arrangement to all stakeholders, including the town unions and traditional rulers, who endorsed it. This is grand deception. By convention, it is political parties that zone offices and not town unions and traditional rulers. So, whatever arrangement made by Obi and APGA for the 2013 governorship election was never binding on other political parties.
By the way, in the election in question, Ifeanyi Ubah (now deceased)and Godwin Ezeemo, both from the South Senatorial District, ran on the platform of the LP and Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) and came fourth and fifth respectively. Sen. Chris Ngige from Central ran on APC platform and came third behind the winner of the election, Willie Obiano of APGA and the first-runner, Tony Nwoye, who was of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the time. These facts are in the public domain.
Hence, the so-called APC elders should desist forthwith from misinforming the public. I challenge them to provide evidence to show where all the political parties sat down and, according to them, “generally agreed to zoning of governorship in Anambra State.”
Also, anybody saying that zoning started with Peter Obi is being too clever by half. At the inception of this Fourth Republic in 1999, Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju (now late) from Anambra South became the governor of Anambra State under the platform of the PDP, which had the zoning principle enshrined in its constitution.
Yet, PDP dropped Mbadinuju for non-performance, and picked Ngige from Central as its candidate for the 2003 governorship election. Ngige was declared winner by INEC. The election tribunal later nullified Ngige’s election in favour of Peter Obi of APGA, also from the Central. Obi ruled for eight years. By default, Anambra Central ruled for 11 years.
In March 2014, Obi handed over to his protégé, Obiano from Anambra North, on the same APGA platform. Obiano ruled for eight years uninterrupted and handed over power to Soludo, his party man from the South Senatorial District.
Looking at the facts before us, by the next transition date in March 2026, every zone in Anambra would have had at least, two terms of eight years each since 1999. South had one term under Mbadinuju (1999-2003). Central had two terms and three years under Ngige and Obi (2003-2014). North had two terms under Obiano (2014-2022). The second term of the South is ongoing under the incumbent Prof Soludo. If we add the late Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife’s two years as Governor of Anambra State during the truncated Third Republic, the South would have ruled for 10 years by the time Soludo’s current tenure elapses in March 2026.
So, what has changed in Anambra to make the zoning arrangement sacrosanct? By every indication, it has not helped anything in the state. The better governors we had in the state were not produced through zoning.
Why should zoning be my headache when Anambra South where I hail from witnessed more developmental strides and tighter security under governors from the other senatorial districts than under the regimes of the late Chinwoke Mbadinuju and Soludo, both Anambra southerners? For me, it clearly sounds illogical and unreasonable to insist on a process that yielded very little or no positive results.
I am, therefore, of the opinion that political parties in Anambra State should prioritise competence and capacity in choosing their flag-bearers for next year’s governorship election in the state. Zoning should occupy the backseat. It is antithetical to democracy. Talking about zoning today is anachronistic. The practice is obsolete. It has outlived its usefulness.
I am sure that the proponents of zoning in Anambra State today do not even know the genesis. The political class adopted zoning at the beginning of the Second Republic to douse the ethnic tensions that arose from the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. Under the practice, political parties agreed to split their presidential and vice presidential tickets between the North and South of the country. It ran on equal footing with a rotational prince that enabled the alternation of the presidency between the North and South.
The zoning practice did not end with the Second Republic in 1983. With the return of democracy in 1999 after a prolonged military interregnum, the political class once more found it expedient at the time to retain the practice, to ensure equity, fairness, justice and inclusivity in the distribution of power at the national level. Some parties went further to enshrine it as a principle in their constitution.
In conclusion, God put our eyes in front for a reason. We must stop looking back. Democracy thrives where everybody is given equal opportunity to contest for public office. The United States of America is a model. The Nigerian experience shows that zoning could be counter-productive. If we truly desire the best for Anambra State, nobody should be precluded from contesting the next governorship election.
•Dr Nzomiwu, a media practitioner, writes from Awka, Anambra State.