A former National Deputy Chairman (South-West) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chief Bode George, has warned the major opposition party against discarding the principle of zoning by leaving its 2023 presidential ticket open for all members to contest.
George, a member of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) who gave this warning on Sunday when he appeared as a guest on a Channels Television programme, ‘Sunday Politics,’ said it was important the party took an early position on zoning the presidency to a particular region of the country so as to douse tensions and infighting currently going on within the party.
The elder statesman said he was worried with the controversy being generated over the zoning of the PDP’s presidential ticket as the buildup to the 2023 elections gathered momentum.
“It is mandatory, it is legitimate for the party to say yes, this is zoned to the South or to the North; but to leave it wide open is combustible,” George said.
Insisting that the party should hearken to the yearnings of Nigerians and zone its presidential ticket to the South, George said:
“Whatever has been in the North after eight years must come to the South; whatever has been in the South for the last eight years must go to the North.
“I am looking at it now as an engineer, there is a political equation; when they conceptualised this idea, nobody in their wildest dream thought there could be another political party that could produce the president.
“When you now say you want to throw it (zoning) away, are you telling Nigerians that it is only in certain parts of the country that you have people who have the competence or the courage to rule Nigeria? How can there be peace?
Are you saying we don’t have anybody in the southern part? What we are telling people is that we have no right as a party to tell any individual that you cannot contest, because it will be illegal,” the elder statesman added.
