Zoning Debate a Negation of Nigerian Nationhood, says Emeka Anyaoku

Zoning Debate a Negation of Nigerian Nationhood, says Emeka Anyaoku

Cover Stories Aug 12, 2010

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Former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku has warned that the ongoing debate on zoning within the PDP is not in the interest of the nation. Read the respected view of the world statesman here below:

“From a national and non-partisan view point, I must warn that the ongoing zoning debate within the PDP is a negation of Nigerian nationhood. To all observers, it was clear that the zoning that occurred in 1998/99 was a direct response to the unique national crisis precipitated by the inexplicable annulment of the country’s hitherto most credible presidential election and the subsequent death of its acknowledged winner, MKO Abiola, in incarcerration.

“The crisis had taken Nigeria to the precipice of national disintegration and the two main political parties at the time wisely responded by selecting their presidential candidates from the seriously aggrieved geographical zone of the country.

“This response was comparable to what happened in Canada in 1968 when in reaction to a similar threat to Canada’s continued existence as one polity by a secessional movement in Quebec the French speaking zone of the country, the out-going Prime Minister, Lester B Pearson, led the governing Liberal Party, to go over the heads of the established party leaders from the English-speaking zones to choose a young French-speaking politician, Pierre Trudeau, as the new Prime Minister in order to save the integrity of Canada.

“Nigeria, like Canada, should by now have consigned both that unique and hopefully unrepeatable national crisis of 1993-98 to history. To advocate zoning today, 50 years after our independence, is therefore like reintroducing a therapy that was applied to a national ailment which all patriotic citizens would regard as having been successfully treated with the reaffirmation of Nigerian nationhood over a decade ago. And this is particularly so when the debate involves splitting, in the name of zoning, a previously agreed presidential ticket that has been touched, not by man, but by Providence.

“Because of its potential serious implications for our national unity, I urge all concerned to handle the zoning debate with utmost circumspection.”

Chief Emeka Anyaoku CFR,CON
Lagos, 12 August 2010.