2023: El-Rufai Rejects Zoning, Says It Will Lead To Inefficiency

Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has rejected zoning of political officers in the country, stressing that it would lead to inefficiency.

Naija News reports that there has been a clamour for the major political parties in Nigeria to zone their 2023 presidential ticket to the southern part of the country.

Though not constitutionally backed, Nigeria have rotated offices – especially that of the presidency – on the basis of geographical zones, from Olusegun Obasanjo to President Muhamadu Buhari.

But speaking at the Nigerian Economic Summit (#NES26) in Abuja, El-Rufai said no country progresses with such an arrangement.

The Kaduna governor stated that qualified individuals should be given equal opportunity to contest for political positions.

He said: “I do not believe that we should be driven in our politics and economics by distribution whether or not there is a logic behind it,” he said.

“In my honest view, Nigeria went wrong when we focused on distribution rather than production. We like to distribute and it has gone as far as saying that in a state, governorship should rotate; that is absurd.

“There is no country in the world that has made progress in the last 50 years that rotates its leaders. I think if we move away from this fixation about distribution to selecting or picking the best person to get the job done… when the job is done, everybody benefits.

“Right now, we are distributing this and we are not making any progress because the focus is on distribution.”