The Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, said the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is yet to decide the zone in the South to produce its presidential candidate during the 2023 general elections.
El-Rufai said the APC only decided the zone to produce its next national chairman.
He, however, stated that he would support any candidate who emerges from the zoning arrangement, be it from the South.
According to the Governor, “I want to clarify that the APC zoning arrangement that we announced is the zoning arrangement for the party. And we’ve always done that in the last three elections we’ve had. When we elected John Oyegun as chairman, we had this zoning arrangement; each zone will have these positions and so on. And we carried that to the time when Adams Oshiomhole assumed office as chairman.
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“All we did now is to flip it. Since the chairman is going to be from the North-Central, it means that the North-Central will take all the positions of the South-South. If you check, you will see all the positions allocated to the North-Central were positions held by the South-South under Oyegun and Oshiomhole.
“All the positions held by the North-West went to the South-East and vice versa. All the positions held by the North-East went to the South-West and vice versa. That’s why the South-West will now produce the national secretary; the national secretary under Oyegun and Oshiomhole was Mai Mala Buni. So, that’s all we did.”
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El-Rufai stated that the ruling party is not talking about zoning the presidency yet.
He, however, added that conversations for zoning will start after the party elects its national officers and primary preparations begin.
According to the Kaduna governor, the zoning arrangement approved by President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday was only sending a signal about the party’s direction.
On supporting a candidate from the South-West, he said, “I will support any APC candidate if I’m satisfied that he will do the best for Nigeria. It doesn’t matter whether he’s from the South-West, South-East or South-South; the APC is what matters and the quality of the person.
“The discussion we are having is that the Presidency is zoned to the South. It’s not zoned to any particular place in the South. The South will have the first go at it. But we’re waiting to see who the aspirants are.”
