Under the above headline, in your July 28, 2013 edition of Sunday Vanguard, Chinweoke Akoka, wrote:

‘Close watchers of events in Anambra contend that the lack of geo-balance and respect for the sensibilities of the electorate in Anambra State by the key players in the newly formed All Progressive Congress (APC) is the greatest headache its most visible aspirant Dr Chris Ngige would have ‘

As avid readers of Vanguard, the quoted paragraph has left a lot to our imagination in the absence of any illustration.

Our party is very sensitive to the feelings of the electorate. Little wonder we have been progressively winning elections in Anambra State. If however the writer is equipped with a proper survey reflecting samples of views of the electorate in state segments of the Anambra voting populace we can properly react to that.

Ordinarily it may not have been worthwhile, trying to fill in the blank spaces because we may not know where the writer is coming from . However, in the circumstance, and considering that many readers like us could easily be misled by the unsubstantiated and sweeping presumptions in the feature article, we wish to state some of our views in the most recent and contemporary issues in Anambra political discourse, hoping that, where none of these addresses what the writer had in mind future write-ups would be spot-on.

Here are the issues:

Merger of parties to form APC.

The APC merger brought five existing political parties together. Three of them, ACN, ANPP and CPC, are merging in full with their structures. Greater fractions of two others, All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) and the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) are also in the merger.

Each of the three full parties nominated nine interim officers in the recently formed Interim National Executive Committee of the APC. APGA nominated six while DPP nominated two.

At the state level, the structures have not been completely fused and, because this lies ahead, it would be difficult to accuse this ‘upcoming Anambra State APC of lacking sense of fair distribution of anything, not event the part positions ‘as contained in the report in review.

Zoning

The component parties making up the APC in their individual capacities prior to this moment and even now in the context of the APC merger do not subscribe to and have not zoned the position of governorship to any senatorial zone in Anambra State.

We need not dwell on the fact that senatorial zones in Anambra, like in many parts of the country, do not necessarily share any sociological ties. Again it is needless to emphasize that Anambra as a state is homogenous in language and culture with only negligible dialectical differences which has never constituted a barrier to the unifying culture.

To this extent Anambra State does not have a history of zoning and there is nothing in the past and present features of the state to suggest that zoning as a concept is plausible, beyond individual whims.

We note that all elections contested in the state since it was created in 1991 have featured strong contenders from communities that make up of all the three senatorial zones in the state.

In the course of this debate which was thrown up by Gov Peter Obi’s desire to hand over to a particular family friend ,school mate from Ogbaru Local Government Area, cleverly excluding his arch-rivals in the state’s competitive politics, we have two posers:

·Has any of the three senatorial zones in Anambra State ever opted out of the governorship elections in the past, supporting the other zones , so that when they eventually offer themselves for elections, other would support them?

·Has Anambra State and its stakeholders ever sat down to discuss and adopt zoning as a concept, agree that it shall be by senatorial zones and then gone ahead to draw up a schedule of turns so that each zone-if that is the acceptable criterium- would know when it is their turn?

The inability of those who have tried to position the alien issue of zoning centrally in the context of Anambra gubernatorial politics has strengthened the resolved of ALL political parties in the state without exception to discard zoning as a concept. ACN does not accept it. It has nearly half a dozen aspirants to the office of the governor from all three senatorial zones. CPC has not broached it. ANPP rejects it. Hence APC does not accept zoning.

PDP has not featured zoning as an issue, otherwise it would not have 23 aspirants from three senatorial zones of the state.

APGA has since rejected it , and the now unsuccessful attempt by Obi to impose the will of incumbency on his party was largely responsible for the protracted crisis in the party. Yet the resolve of party faithful is so strong that today, what is left of APGA (APGA-PDP) after the greater majority has left with Gov Rochas Okorocha to APC still does not accept zoning in Anambra State governorship. This explains why there are over 20 aspirants in APGA-PDP, again from the three senatorial zones.

Anambra people themselves, true to the nature of their society-competitive and quasi-egalitarian) would rather compete for everything on merit. They abhor laziness. The loathe quota system, even in the larger Nigerian context. They place it beyond their imagination that a brilliant student in class could be held down for another to catch up. They would rather encourage those behind to raise their game and overtake the front liners. That is the Anambra spirit!