• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Presidency: Nigeria needs a balance of competence and zoning

2023: Ex-army, air force chiefs urge youths to mobilise for credible polls

Muhammadu Sanusi, the former emir of Kano and one-time Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, on his special October 1 interview on Arise TV enjoined Nigerians to worry more about the competence of the next President rather than his primordial origin.

According to Sanusi, zoning is not the problem of Nigeria. Rather,the country needs a leader that can deliver. This he said is because the economic challenges of the country, from rising unemployment to deepening poverty, are not confined to only one region and so the country needs a leader that can deliver irrespective of whether he is from the north or south. He urged Nigerians to insist on character and competence and not the region the president comes from.

Sanusi furthermore cited America and other countries that do not worry about where their presidents come from. All they ask for is the track record of the the candidate presented.

No doubt character and competence are vitals in the choice of who becomes Nigeria’s President come 2023. Ordinarily, when a good and detribalised leader is in charge of governance, the impact of his policy and good governance will be felt across the nation without any feeling of marginalization. But this has been a far cry for Nigeria, as politicians by their action and inaction have collectively eroded mutual trust among various geopolitical and ethnic groups in Nigeria. Because of this mutual distrust and fear for one another as well as the complex nature of the country’s socio-political structure, zoning,there is a need for balance.

As a matter of fact, the problem is not zoning but the ability and means of selecting competent persons from the zones. This has been the worst undoing of the nation.

In fairness to the zones, there is no zone in Nigeria without people of character and competence. No group of people in Nigeria are not without the good and the bad. Ideally therefore, it is right to say that Nigeria is not ripe to jettison rotational presidency. While getting the most qualified Nigerians as president is important, rotational presidency in 2023 would also foster unity. What the people want are the means to continue to solidify unity and have a sense of belonging. With the level of distrust in the country today which has aggravated the level of agitation in the country and with the poor way that the present administration of Mohammed Buhari has managed appointments perceived to be lopsided, any attempt to ignore zoning in 2023 will likely spell doom for the country.

Read Also: 2023: Nigeria’s next president should emerge from the South-East

It was further argued that if the country has a non- rotational leadership, it means some parts of the country will feel that unity is theoretical. And that is the undiluted truth.

Consequently, since zoning still remains a gentlemanly agreement, no qualified Nigerian should be denied the opportunity of contesting for the position of President.

Having said that, the sustenance of rotation does not mean that the region to produce the candidate should not work at producing a good one,

Since the constitution does not clearly spell out rotation, it means you cannot stop someone from anywhere from contesting. It is only a gentlemanly agreement to ensure that unity is certain.

Let us continue that gentlemanly agreement until we are ripe enough to add skills and other credentials.

There is a great need in Nigeria today for inclusive leadership, and this can best be achieved through giving each region or zone a sense of belonging. When we embrace inclusiveness in our political land map, we can then ask the zone in question to provide us a person of character and leadership competence.

There is no doubt that there are brilliant well qualified Nigerians all over the country who have the leadership qualities to govern this nation.

This crop of men and women exists in all the six geo-political zones of the country and in the two main religions. The nation needs a balance of both competence and zoning.

Those agitating for power to shift to the south are doing so on the premises that it is rational that the south should be given a chance after a northerner would have spent eight years in power come 2023, which their northern counterparts are countering with disingenuity.

The arguments portray a calabash of many faces, the side one choses to look at seems the best. In truth, neither side is sincerely seeking power for the people of either the North or the South; the politicians are jockeying for power for their own selves. That is why Nigerians must be circumspect and not allow the hysteria of rotational presidency to subsume the real issues confronting long-suffering Nigerians, the perennial victims of their maladministration.

What the country needs now is a fundamental means of selecting leaders. We must desist from the practice of selecting leaders via number of sheer votes. This is the singular reason underage citizens who cannot discern the right from wrong are engaged in the voting system. It is high time we treated our leadership selection in such a way to get the best hands to run the affairs of the country. Nigeria has not gotten to the level where we can rely mainly on competence and character for choosing of leaders. We need an all- inclusive approach

to foster our unity. A balance of competence and zoning is clearly needed to foster unity among all the various ethnic groups!