2023: Ohanaeze Attacks Northern Elders Forum Over Zoning

The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Sunday, said the recent declaration by the Northern Elders Forum that zoning of the presidency in 2023 be thrown open was a strategy ‘to destroy the vital values that have helped to lubricate a precarious balance in the country’.

The Igbo socio-cultural group was reacting to a communique issued by the NEF, captioned “2023 Presidency: Northern Elders Kick against Zoning”, which was signed by a former vice chancellor of Plateau State University, Professor Doknan Danjuma Shenni. The stance of the communiqué is that the ‘2023 presidential contest be left open to every region of the country for the best candidate to emerge’.

Ohanaeze Ndigbo, in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Dr Alex Ogbonnia, expressed surprise that the NEF would ‘collectively act the fifth Roman emperor, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, who fiddled while Rome was on fire’.
According to Ohanaeze, “The NEF is aware that Nigeria has religiously followed the rotation and zoning principle since 1999 with Chief Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (South West) as the elected president of Nigeria. Obasanjo handed over to the North in the person of former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2007. At the death of Yar’Adua, a southerner, specifically the South South in the person of Dr Goodluck Jonathan, was elected the president. Jonathan again handed over to a northerner, President Muhammadu Buhari, whose second tenure of four years each will end in 2023.

“It is only fair that the presidency be zoned to the South, specifically the South East of Nigeria. The NEF knows full well that in the interest of peace, unity and corporate existence of Nigeria, we the elders must, as a matter of necessity, embrace equity and justice.”

Ohanaeze observed that the NEF acknowledged Nigeria’s insecurity, poverty, among other problems, noting that, “These issues have remained unabated because of ethnic and religious-induced policies, injustice and more importantly, the inability to make the right choices.”

Dr Ogbonnia recalled that around 1994, some Nigerian patriots conceived an article of faith and principle of rotation of power among the country’s six geopolitical zones of South South, South East, South West, North West, North Central and the North East to promote peace, unity and progress in Nigeria.

He stated, “There is no country on the planet earth that can progress under the dire straits and strains of inequity, injustice, mistrust, viciousness, braggadocio and predatory ethnocentrism. The above vices will surely engender crises, conflicts, economic downturn, unemployment, poverty, insecurity, kidnapping, and banditry. All the ongoing shenanigans about zoning in Nigeria are because it is the turn of the South East to produce a president in Nigeria.”

He thanked the likes of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, Chief E K Clarke, and Dr Pogu Bitrus ‘for their courage to stand by the right side of history’, adding that, ‘President Muhammadu Buhari has the burden of history to treat the South East how Chief Olusegun Obasanjo treated the North in 2007’.

According to him, “Obasanjo displayed honour and statesmanship when, in 2007, he handed over to the North in the person of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Today, Buhari is the leader of the country. He pilots the ship of the state. It is hoped that he will anchor the ship at the appropriate bank.

“With an Igbo as president of Nigeria, all the indices of a fragile state that currently confront Nigeria will vanish for good. Nigerians are witnesses to the highly accomplished cerebral Igbo technocrats with impressive track records of accomplishments that have indicated their interest to redeem Nigeria from a tailspin.”