Zoning, not Muslim-Muslim ticket, will determine 2023 presidential poll — Senator Adeyeye

The National Chairman, South-West Agenda for Asiwaju Tinubu (SWAGA), Senator Dayo Adeyeye, has said that the issue of power rotation, not the Muslim-Muslim ticket, would decide the winner of the next year’s presidential election.

Adeyeye said politicians and their followers in the North and other parts of the country believe in zoning arrangements and were always ready to frustrate any arrangement meant to scuttle it.

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Speaking while briefing newsmen in Abuja on Saturday, the former Ekiti South senator said the electorate, including those in the North, would vote against the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, for violating the zoning arrangement of the PDP.

He said the North moved against whatever plans by any political party to field a northern candidate in the 1999 election in the interest of justice and fair play.

The development, according to him, led to the emergence of two Yoruba men, Olusegun Obasanjo and Olu Falae as presidential candidates of the PDP and the All Progressives Party in the 1999 general elections, which was won by the former.

Adeyeye also explained that Obasanjo ensured that the PDP fielded a northern candidate that would succeed him in 2007 despite the fact that the party paraded very strong candidates from the South.

He also said Nigerians rejected the re-election bid of the former president Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 because of their belief in power rotation since the South had ruled for 14 years then.

He said, “The zoning arrangement which had been violated by the candidate of the PDP would determine the winner of next year’s election and not the same faith ticket. The Muslim-Muslim ticket is a distraction caused by the opposition against the candidate of the APC.

“Many Nigerians are not too keen on the Muslim-Muslim ticket. What is of paramount importance to them is that it is about time that power should rotate to the South.”

He faulted the argument of Atiku Abubakar who said the issue of zoning should be a political party affair.

Adeyeye said, “Atiku’s argument does not hold water because when a president emerges from a political party, he becomes the president of the country and not that of his political party.

“Politicians are not more than 10 per cent of the population of the country. The entire populace would determine the issue of rotation, not the politicians.”

“The PDP elected a northerner as the national chairman in anticipation that power would rotate to the South after president Buhari but Atiku betrayed Nigerians by contesting.”