Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodinma, on Tuesday, lent his voice to the ongoing debate on power shift to the South in 2023, saying the choice of who succeeds President Muhammadu Buhari would be determined on political party basis and not by tribal or ethnic sentiment.
Uzodinma said this in an interview with State House correspondents shortly after his meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The Imo governor spoke a day after a former Abia State governor and Chief Whip of the Senate, Dr. Orji Uzo Kalu, expressed similar view, saying that the transfer of power to the South in 2023 won’t be automatic.
Kalu, who spoke against the backdrop of agitations by the South to produce Nigeria’s next president in 2023, warned that the ruling All Progressives Congress had no provision for zoning in its constitution, contrary to the erroneous belief that the South has based its demand.
The former Abia governor spoke in Minna on Monday when he visited a former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, at his Hilltop mansion, saying he was in Minna on a private visit to welcome Abubakar from his recent medical trip abroad.
The Imo governor and Kalu, the Senate chief whip, made their similar positions known at a time there is a raging debate between those arguing that the South, especially the SouthEast should produce the next President in 2023 and those who hold the belief that Buhari’s successor can emerge from any zone.
Governor Uzodinma said, “You know that the position is not vacant now, there is a sitting President and we are practising partisan democracy and not tribal democracy.
“So, the emergence of presidential candidate will come on a party by party basis, not a tribe by tribe basis.
“But if there are other internal factors that will form part of the considerations for parties taking decision, of course, that will be entirely the job of the leadership of those political parties and I think that is the right thing to do.”
The Imo governor also disclosed that he was at the Villa to seek President Buhari’s intervention on the problem of erosion ravaging his state, which he described as alarming.
He said the state urgently required the help of the Federal Government on the matter.
