Professor Ango Abdullahi was the Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and served as Special Adviser to former President Obasanjo on Food Security from 1999 to 2003. He agitated for increased allocation to the Agricultural sector, believing that agriculture is still the cornerstone of the Nigeria’s economy as it contributes 40 per cent GDP and is 70 per cent employer of  labour.

In this encounter, he answers questions on the controversial communique on zoning issued after last Tuesday’s’s meeting between the North and South East leaders.
Excerpts.

The meeting of South-East and Northern leaders on Tuesday  resolved that zoning must be complied with. You were part of this meeting. What exactly transpired during the meeting?

A communique was issued after the meeting. Journalists were there and they gave their reports which was published  in almost all the national dailies. There is nothing more to add. Your colleagues that came went home with copies of the communique.

One is beginning to think that this issue of zoning is getting out of hand. We are spending so much energy on that.

I don’t see why it should get out of hand because it’s a very simple matter. It’s just that some people want to turn it into something else. We all know that there was a zoning  agreement in PDP. Why then should people begin to come up another agreement? We are saying that people should honour the earlier agreement and that is the problem.

Those who wanted to use it for something else for whatever reason are now claiming there was no such a thing and that something else should happen.

There are several schools of thought on this issue…

What schools?

Zoining: Northern leaders deceived us — Ezeife

A school believes it was never there from the beginning. Another thinks it was smuggled into the PDP Constitution along the line after Obasanjo became President….

Those of us who were there at beginning knew what happened, right from Constitutional Conference to the time when G-34 transformed into the PDP and this was in the constitution of the party. So, the relevant section of the constitution of the party captured this clearly.

Zoning is an adopted policy of the party and this is the way to get every ethnic nationality in Nigeria  involved in leadership. It is there in the constitution of the party and it was there from the onset. Why are some selfish now, and somewhere along the line are saying it doesn’t work for them?

But some of the people who also were there at the very beginning said it was not there initially.
People like who? They should have a name. Tell me a name and I will tell you who he is in the party. In 1998, the party was formed from the remnant of G-34. PDP was formed and we sat down and wrote this constitution, manifesto and all. When we presented our constitution to INEC in 1998, it was included.
But Professor Sam Oyovbaire said it was in the amended constitution of 2002 and 2006, Section 7, 2(c) of the amended constitution.

Have you read Tony Anenih’s letter to Audu Ogbeh? That was written in 2007, reminding Audu Ogbeh that there was a zoning arrangement in the party which should subsist. That was why Obasanjo was allowed to continue in office from 2003 to 2007.

But that was in 2007. I’m talking about the very beginning when PDP was formed.

Well, if you look at the history of Nigeria, you know that this country exists as a federation which is made up of people of diverse ethnic groups. It was on the basis of this that we adopted a federal constitution which is a principle of zoning and sharing of power.

If you look at the parties in the second republic, like NPN when Shagari was President, there was zoning. Shagari was from the North, the Vice President was from the South East, Joseph Wayas, the then Senate President was from the South-South and so on. This was how it worked. It was the same thing with the Social Democratic Party, SDP, of the defunct third republic if not that Abiola’s election was annulled. That was how he succeeded.

It was also the same way that Obasanjo succeeded even though he was rejected by the South West. If our records are correct, he was rejected by the South West. But we insisted on the principle of zoning even when he lost his ward in the election, lost his local government, lost the gubernatorial election and yet, based on the principle of zoning, he remained President. We decided he was going to be the candidate of the party.

Was the  communique of your meeting on Tuesday unanimous?

The leaders of the meeting signed the communique and the meeting was composed of Northern blocs and South-East blocs.

The impression that I got….

Oh, you have an impression but I’m saying that your people were there. You must be speaking for somebody. You are very partisan on this issue. Why should you have an impression? You are biased.
I am not.

But I spoke with somebody who attended the  meeting but he is of the opinion that the South-East leaders were deceived as the communique was not supposed to be. To them, the meeting was a fact-finding mission and not a decision-taking event.

Who attended the meeting that said that? The leaders of the South-East were signatories to the communique.

Dr. Ezeife differs. According to him, there was an agreement that there would be no communique after the meeting because the South-East leaders were there on explanatory mission and were to report back to their people but they were manouvred.

That was Ezeife. That was the beauty of the meeting. Ezeife can go and publish his own communique. When you are talking about decision, you are talking about consensus or unanimous decision. Ezeife may not have agreed to all the things that was stated due to differences of opinion but that does not mean there was no communique that was signed by the leaders of both sides.

Was he allowed to express his opinion on the resolution?

Ezeife is a friend of mine. We sat on the same table. He was asked to speak because we thought he was one of the respected Igbo leaders and we thought his views should be important. So, he was asked to speak and he spoke.

If he does not agree with the communique issued after the meeting, that was his problem. He spoke. He may have spoken at variance with the others who came with him from the South-East but he spoke. If you are saying that there should be a referendum in the South-East, then there should be a referendum everywhere else for people to agree or disagree. Perhaps, you should advocate for a referendum in all the zones, for people to agree or disagree.

Those who want Jonathan to contest say so because Yar’Adua’s ticket in 2007 has the other side of the coin which is Jonathan who is now the President. It was a joint ticket for them.

What do you mean by a joint ticket? There was a ticket. The ticket had Yar’Adua as the PDP candidate for Presidential election and there was a running mate for that candidate. There is nothing like a joint ticket but a running mate for the Presidential candidate and it happened that somebody was picked for Umaru Yar’Adua in the person of Jonathan Goodluck.

Shouldn’t he be the one to run the second term of Yar’Adua?

So, has Jonathan changed his name to Yar’Adua? Or has he changed his indigene-ship from South-South to  North-West? If he has done that, then, we will begin to talk about that one. See, we still have Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who was the running mate of  the late Umaru Yar’Adua from the North and the Constitution provides that he carries on the duties of that office at the demise of Yar’Adua till the end of his four year term.

This term will end in May next year, not beyond it. So, the question of Jonathan running the second term of Yar’ Adua does not fit in anywhere.

But if you consider the issues of the South-South: the agitation for resource control and the fact that in Nigeria’s history, the South-South has never had a shot at the presidency, wouldn’t you advise the North to let it go this time?

Somebody produced something that supported the South-South before oil was discovered. Have you forgotten that? Even the present South-East where I think you come from produced palm oil that was exported and the proceeds of that was used to develop Port-Harcourt and other places. Do you have to go back to palm-oil production to reclaim your right?

What do you think should be done about zoning because as it is, the matter is getting out of hand?
It is not at all. It has never gotten out of hand before, why should it get out of hand now? Is it because of one person who wants to become President even though it is not the turn of his zone? It cannot get out of hand, take it from me.

We have six geo-political zones.

Yes, there are six geo-political zones which are quite convenient for sharing offices and public appointments in the civil service. But in terms of the office of the President, go and read the constitution , you’d find that the presidency revolves between the North and the South.

We had the North and the South in the past but we have six zones now.

The North and the South are what we have in the Constitution of Nigeria. The constitution does not recognise six geo-political zones. The six geo-political zones were created to make it easy for power to reach all the nooks and crannies of this country and I support it.

The North versus South creates room for old hands to keep coming back.

Oh, now you are talking. So, that is it. You are referring to personalities who were there before and want to contest again. Well, you cannot stop them.

The choice is entirely their own and that is why we are in democracy. Nobody has the power to stop anybody but on the day of voting, if you don’t want a particular candidate because he was there before, you simply vote for another.

Outside that, you cannot stop anybody whether he is hundred years or not.