By AkINWUNMI KING

As the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) continues to drag the issue of zoning of the 2023 presidential ticket, the Kogi State governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, on Sunday, March 7, resurrected the controversy over the rotational presidency with a declaration that the party never had any form of zoning arrangement.

There have been claims from some party chieftains that there was a gentleman’s agreement reached in 2014 to return power to the South after President Muhammadu Buhari must have completed his second term in 2023. But, despite these claims, there are other party members, who have continued to maintain that the issue of who becomes the president should be about competence and not by zoning.

The Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai and the Minister for Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, had both on several occasions, insisted that the party had an agreement that the 2023 presidency would be zoned to the South after the expiration of President Buhari’s tenure in compliance with the understanding reached by the party’s leaders during the merger talks before 2015 general elections.

El-Rufai had said there was an agreement that the presidency should be zoned to the South after the eight-year rule of the North, stressing that although the agreement was not enshrined in the party’s constitution, politicians are aware of it.

“That is why I came out and said that after President Buhari’s eight years, no Northerner should contest for the office. Let the Southerners also have eight years,” he had stated.

Fashola too had urged the APC to respect its zoning formula in picking its presidential candidate for the 2023 election.

“The truth is that what makes an agreement spectacular is the honour in which it is made, not whether it is written. If it was written, there would be no court cases of breach of contract because it’s a document that is written and signed that goes to court.

“The private agreement you make with your brother and sister should not be breached. It must be honoured,” Fashola had said. (Sunday Independent)