Tambuwal: Merit Not Zone Should Determine Nigeria’s Next President

Laleye Dipo in Minna

The Sokoto State Governor, Alhaji Aminu Waziri Tambuwal has stressed that merit and not the zone a person comes from should determine who becomes Nigeria’s president in 2023.
Tambuwal also emphatically said the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) would not zone the presidency to any part of the country.

The Sokoto state governor said these in Minna, Niger state on Wednesday, after holding private audiences with two former Nigerian leaders, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and General Abdulsalami Abubakar at their residences.

The former Speaker of the House of Representatives claimed that zoning the presidency had never been the main issue in any political party in Nigeria since 1979, arguing that “the main issue has been that political parties will throw up candidates and allow Nigerians to decide who to expect as their president.”

According to him, zoning of the presidency to the south-west in 1999 was a deliberate action by the political class to assuage the region following the annulment of the June 12 presidential election believed to have been won by late Chief MKO Abiola from the region in 1993.

The Sokoto state governor maintained that what was paramount to the opposition PDP was how to win the presidential election in 2023, adding that the party would not dissipate its energy on zoning the presidency to any part of the country.

“What this country needs now is a competent leader, a person with capacity not a regional leader,” he declared, saying he would give Nigeria the desired leadership for social economic growth if elected president.
Details of the meeting between Tambuwal and the duo of General Ibrahim Babangida and General Abdulsalami Abubakar were not known, but it was believed the Sokoto state governor briefed them of his presidential asparagus

Tambuwal was accompanied to Minna by a former Governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Attaihiru Bafarawa and a former deputy governor of the state Alhaji Muktar Shehu Shagari as well as a former publicity secretary of the PDP, Mr. Olisa Metuh.