PDP zoning dilemma: A self-inflicted injury

The chairman of the PDP zoning committee, Samuel Ortom, governor of Benue state, cut a pathetic sight while laboriously explaining the so-called unanimous decision of his committee on zoning. Ortom wanted the world to believe that his yeoman committee did not recommend that the PDP presidential ticket be thrown open. Ortom must have believed very much like Adolf Hitler that the intelligence of the Nigerian masses is very low.

Let us, for a moment, believe Ortom, the beleaguered governor of Benue state who has had a running battle with killer herdsmen that have attempted his life and that of predecessor at least once. Ortom’s predecessor, Gabriel Suswan, had told his survival story and his narrow escape. Ortom too nearly died but escaped by a whisker but his chief security officer, Chris Dega, who was a retired AIG of police, wasn’t so lucky. He died protecting Ortom.

One would not think God spared Ortom’s life for this kind of banal politics with future and survival of the Nigerian nation and her citizens, especially the endangered species called Benue people of Nigeria. It is expected to offer him more chances to stand in the gap to save his own people and the rest of the country. And since Nigeria is practising democracy, to be able to bring in the government capable of giving the country a much needed respite, the PDP have to rely on a winnable candidate for vote.

Going by the constitution of the PDP as amended in 2009, the question of the zoning committee should not have arisen in the first place since the party’s basic extant constitutional provision unambiguously stipulates that northern and southern aspirants cannot contest together in the same PDP presidential primary. Yet, the PDP has been selling presidential nomination forms to both northern and southern Nigerian aspirants only to make a bolt-face with the Ortom zoning committee. Who is fooling who?

The fact is, since power is in the north at the moment and would be up for determination in 2023, and bound to move south, the Ortom committee was utterly unnecessary and therefore a subterfuge. And the PDP’s ‘zoning with rotation’ is also expected to play out as a power-sharing principle that has been settled and augmenting the federal character principle that has been in place since 1999. This covers a broader field of distribution until some of the PDP spin doctors started to whittle it down and rubbish it, as they are trying again at the moment, regardless of the dire consequences that have always resulted each time.

For the avoidance of doubt, rotation and zoning principle was written into the PDP party’s constitution in 2009. Article 7(2c) of the PDP constitution states that: “In pursuance of the principle of equity, justice and fairness, the party shall adhere to the policy of rotation and zoning of party and public elective offices, and it shall be enforced by the appropriate executive committee at all levels”.

Since the office of the president of Nigeria and his vice are part and parcel of the political offices contemplated by the nation’s constitution and indivisible, the only way to logically and practically share the two is by rotating them between the north and south, and between the zones within the two divides namely, north and south.

Superfluous arguments by such PDP party members that the PDP has nothing to zone since the party is not in power at the center is obviously mischievous. The presidency of Nigeria is not a property of any political party and moves with election seasons. What the PDP and indeed all other political parties must do is to flow with its tide.

Its tidal nature is what prevails and not the argument of some party members that PDP can only zone when it is in power at the center. This clique pushing this nauseating position are invariably saying the PDP should retain its ticket in the north for 2023 since its last attempt with a northern candidate (Atiku) did not produce the desired result.

This argument is warped and incurably defective. Are its proponents saying that unless and until the PDP produces Nigeria’s president of northern extraction that southern Nigeria must wait? The poverty of this argument further buttresses the noble and patriotic position that political parties would have to move with the election circles and the dictates of the moment in keeping faith with the convention and federal character principle that power has to rotate between north and south Nigeria.

Those playing politics with this binding reality confronting the nation are only preoccupied with, and blindfolded by, power and greed. Some have also argued that PDP has to worry about winning power before thinking about zoning. Those who argue in a like manner argue amiss. PDP has always won power with around 60% of its votes coming from south-east and south-south Nigeria.

If this is statically correct, why is the party fidgeting about zoning power to the south and ultimately to the south-east, which have often delivered the PDP at the polls? Their presumption appears to be that the south-east in particular cannot win presidential election even though zoning as captured in the PDP constitution expressly favours the zone (south-east).

If one may ask: Where are the safe states of the PDP in the north? Atiku technically lost Adamawa, his own state in the 2019 presidential election. Though he won the state by a very slim majority, Buhari won 11 LGs while he (Atiku) won only 10. North-east and north-west are obviously core APC states and north-central seems evenly split between the APC and the PDP. Question then is: If the south-east and south-south are denied the presidential ticket which even the party constitution has thrust that way, in the hope that somebody like Atiku would conjure a winning magic and the two core zones of the PDP in the south revolt? Will it not show at the polls in protest votes and give the APC easy victory?

What is more, PDP ought to discernibly know that the APC is lurking in the shadows to cash in on its fatal mistakes.

Since express mention of one thing is an express exclusion of another, the PDP should have followed its constitution and allowed rotation to go south. Even the national sentiment demands the same today. Instead, the party chose to set up an opaque committee to interpret what is already expressly provided. The PDP is swimming against the tide for throwing its presidential ticket open despite what its own constitution demands of it.

No matter how much cotton wool Ortom pulls over our eyes, the PDP presidential ticket is now open, no thanks to his nebulous committee. The farthest the NEC of the PDP would go in a feeble attempt to redeem the party from anarchy and doom would be to say that it is zoning south but cannot stop aspirants from other zones who have constitutional right to run. Once they come to that passé, it would dawn on everyone that the party indeed has thrown its presidential ticket open since northern and southern PDP aspirants will contest in the 2023 primaries against the spirit and letters of the PDP constitution. So, PDP, in its characteristic signature move, is zoning and not zoning at the same time.

The PDP is trying to dribble everyone again and may end up dribbling itself out of 2023 as happened in 2015. The party is also working on consensus as a seemingly smart measure to prevent an implosion. It may not save the PDP. What is right is PDP zoning to the south and micro-zoning to south-east since south-west (16 years) and south-south (eight years) have both produced president and vice, south-east producing none, not just in the last 23 years but since the end of the civil war.

The south-east is patiently waiting to see where the rigmarole would end and to meet each of the two major political parties at the polls for a deserved recompense. The day of reckoning is already upon them and history has a way of repeating itself.

Mefor is an Abuja-based forensic/social psychologist and journalist. He can be reached via [email protected], +234-905642437, or on Twitter @LawMefor1