By Bukola Kayode
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has cleared the air on his position on the zoning of the presidency and the best age for the country’s next leader.
Atiku who was reacting to what he said was the inaccurate presentation of his opinion on both issues as shared during a visit by the Fix Nigeria Group, said his response questions around the eligibility of frontline presidential hopefuls were sincere and not in any way sinister.
The former Vice-President in a transcript from the meeting shared by his Media Adviser, Paul Ibe, stressed that the constitution doesn’t recognize zoning, neither does it a cap on age for presidential candidates.
He said: I have heard people talk about ‘oh… we should give it to a young man, or we should not give it to an old man, we should give it to a middle aged man, and so on and so forth.’ Of course, they have the freedom of speech and they can say anything. But fundamentally, the constitution says that all of us can contest. The constitution has not barred anyone of us.
‘There is no zoning in the constitution. There is none. I was a member of the Constituent Assembly that drafted this very constitution. Then, as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, we felt that there should be a sense of belonging.
“I remember that I had a very heated argument with the Late Dr. Alex Ekwueme at the Constitutional Conference. I said, ‘Alex, you want to bring in zoning because you want to breakaway this country.’ We had very heated debate with him and later on, I apologized to him and told him: ‘you reason better than myself. I was emotional in my reasoning. I think the zonal thing that you are proposing is a good thing.’
Atiku went on to say: “I assure you that as far as I am concerned, I will observe and implement whatever will bring about the peace, unity and stability of this country. I met an Emir three nights ago; he is not from my state. He is from one of the other states and he said to me that: ‘you know why I support you strongly to be president?’ What are you looking for at this age? You have married finish, you don born finish. You have everything. But my fear is that if I go and give it to a young man, he may be looking for women to marry; looking for a car to buy or a house to build. Now what are we saying?’ I laughed. I said: ‘well, it doesn’t follow.
“God endows leadership. You can have a young thirty years old man and he will do better than an old man. So, leadership is an endowed attribute of God. We should try to look for such a person who has been endowed”.
The former Vice-President who inferred that he will run for president said he awaits the signing of the Electoral Act by President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said: “You have already said what is before us today. First of all, we are waiting for the President to sign the Electoral Act; only God knows – maybe until after the elections that he will sign the bill. But when he signs it, we will expect – of course – that INEC will release their guidelines. And when INEC releases its own guidelines, we expect the political parties to read and adopt which option.
“In the draft Electoral Act, we have three options: direct, indirect and consensus. Each political party will now decide which option it will adopt. Then, we will know. But my senses tell me that the PDP will go for the indirect primaries. Because, we believe that that is the most efficient and that is the less expensive and also it brings politically enlightened members of the party to make a very important decision for the party, on behalf of the party. So, we still have a little bit of time to wait. Hopefully, before the end of this month, we will have the Electoral Bill signed into law”.
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