By Abdulwahab Abdulah

LAGOS—Founder and President of Oodua Peoples Congress, OPC, Dr. Fredrick Fasehun, has thrown his weight behind the rumoured ambition of President Goodluck Jonathan to contest 2011 election.

Fasehun, at a press briefing yesterday in Lagos, said President Jonathan has constitutional right to contest just as he described the Peoples Democratic Party’s, PDP zoning arrangement as evil and “latter-day aberration in Nigerian politics”.

Fasehun spoke as a group, the Association of Patriotic Nigerians, APN, backed the aspiration of former Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, and canvassed an open electoral process in 2011.

APN National Chairman, Mr. Vitalis Okemadu, urged the electorate not to shut out any aspirant from the 2011 polls.

He said competence and ability to deliver should form the basis for the election of the next president and not necessarily zoning.

He enumerated Babangida’s achievements while in power and stated that the former leader ought to be given a second chance.

Insisting that zoning should be jettisoned, Fasehun said, in 1999, it was the whole country, “and not just the PDP that decided to appease the Yoruba for the loss of June 12 and the death of the President-elect, Bashorun MKO Abiola.”