The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, on Tuesday, called for the South-East geopolitical zone to take over power when President Muhammadu Buhari ends his tenure in 2023.
According to Ngige, if the region produces Nigeria’s next president, all agitation and sins of no appointments would be put to rest.
The former Governor of Anambra State called for rotation of presidency to the region while on Channels Tv.
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He said, “If Nigerians of all shades of opinion in all the political parties agree to send down the presidency in both parties to the South-East, you would have buried the ghosts of the civil war permanently. You would have buried all the separatist agitations permanently; you would have buried all the sins of ‘oh no appointments, these and that’ permanently. Everything will begin to rest.”
The minister, however, stated that zoning and rotation are not entrenched in the constitution of Nigeria, hence this might be a hindrance to the call for power to be shifted to the region.
“Why do I say so? I say so because we have a constitution of Nigeria that does not have the issue of zoning and rotation entrenched in it.
“But that same constitution, in section 14 talks about federal character and that in any establishment of government, there must be a semblance of everybody participating so that there would not be any perception of a monopoly of functions of the office there or the powers thereby any section of the country.
“So, that area of the constitution, if you extrapolate it, it is talking about rotation. If you extrapolate it, it is talking about zoning, states to be represented in government or any government institution.
“That is why some political parties like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) now have zoning and rotation. In the APC, we don’t have rotation entrenched there. But by mutual agreement, we’re doing zoning.
“We zoned the offices in the party. That’s why whenever you have the chairman coming from the North, the secretary will be South and vice versa. These are the two effective offices or power in any political party.”
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