Osoba backs zoning of 2023 presidency to South

A former governor of Ogun State, Chief Olusegun Osoba, has backed the zoning of the presidency by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to Southern Nigeria after President Muhammadu Buhari’s second tenure.

Osoba, who featured on Arise Television breakfast show on Tuesday, said zoning was considered during the formation of APC but was not put in the party constitution so that it would not contradict the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution.

• Buhari congratulates ex-Super Eagles coach, Christian Chukwu at 70
• More guns on the street won’t make Nigeria safer

He said the choice of the party’s presidential candidate from the North and national chairman from the South justified the position of APC at the merger talks on ‘zoning’.

Osoba, who said his ally, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has the right to contest the 2023 presidential election, said nobody from the South-East geo-political zone had met him to seek support.

He said: “Part of the understanding in the case of rotation is a conventional understanding that the presidency will move between the North and the South. That was the reason why we now allowed the chairman (of the party to come from the South).

“I don’t want to use the word zoning because we definitely did not put zoning. We know it may go in conflict with the Nigerian constitution, which says anyone who is a Nigerian, who has read up to school certificate, can contest and at the age of 35, I think can contest for the presidency of the country.

“But there was a clear gentlemanly understanding that the Northern part of the country will produce the president when we did the merger in 2013 and the chairman of the party will then come from the South,” he said.