By Clifford Ndujihe

APART from the profile and pedigree of the candidates, their backers and political structure, among others, one of the avalanche of factors that will shape the outcome of the February 16 presidential election is permutation for 2023.

Which zone or section of Nigeria will produce the president in 2023? How will the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, or the election of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and any of the remaining 71 candidates boost the chances of the zone or section of producing the president in 2023?

These are some of the questions some political leaders will consider before throwing their support to any of the 70 presidential standard bearers today.

Already, the issue of the presidency going to the South-East or South-West in 2023 was one of the promises made at the presidential campaigns and town hall meetings of the APC. There is also the understanding that Atiku Abubakar would do a term so that power could rotate to the South-East, where his running mate, Mr. Peter Obi, hails from.

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On many occasions, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Power, Works and Housing Minister, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, urged the people of South-West to vote for President Buhari in the 2019 elections to guarantee a return of power to the region in 2023.

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Mr. Boss Mustapha, last April, said the people of South-East would have a better chance of producing the president in 2023, if they gave their support to the second term ambition of President Buhari. “Preach it to the other South-East states that the shortest way to Igbo presidency is to support Buhari in 2019,” Mustapha told a delegation of the Ebonyi state chapter of the APC who visited his office in Abuja.

A host of APC leaders in the South-East including Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, Director General of Voice of Nigeria, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, and Chairman Senate Committee on Customs, Excise and Tarrifs, Senator Hope Uzodinma, also urged the zone to vote for Buhari’s re-election to enable the South-East produce the president in 2023.

Apart from the South-East and South-West, there are hordes of politicians all over the country, who

are angling for the presidency and would readily run on the shortest path to the throne.

Some of these politicians across the country calculate that with Buhari, the coast would be clear for them in 2023 because he would not be standing for election again. This is more so as the APC does not have power rotation in its constitution.

A member of the last National Conference organised by the immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan Administration, said northern power brokers want the North to keep the presidency for 12 years because in the last 20 years of democratic rule, the South ruled for 14 years

However, those angling for power shift to the South-East, said the zone deserves to be brought into the Nigerian equation in the interest of national cohesion and equity.

Unarguably, the South-East is the most marginalised in terms of power sharing in Nigeria’s 59 years history as an independent country.

The zone held power for six months during the military regime of late Major General Aguiyi Ironsi.

South-East is followed by North-East (5 years and three months through late Sir Tafawa Balewa, who was prime minister from 1960 to 1966); and South-South (six years through Dr Goodluck Jonathan).

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The most favoured zones are North-Central, which occupied the topmost seat for 18 years and five months through Generals Yakubu Gowon, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar; North-West, 17 and a half years, through General Murtala Muhammed, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Buhari,late General Sani Abacha, and late Dr Umaru Musa Yar’Adua; and the South-West through General Olusegun Obasanjo and Chief Ernest Shonekan.

The North wants 12 years at a stretch to compensate for the three terms that the South had since the return of civil rule in 1999 through Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (eight years) and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan (six years).

Currently, the North has held power for 41 years and three months while the South has been in the saddle for 17 years nine months.