Ahead of the 2023 general elections, a socio-political organization, Enugu Rebirth, has called for the jettisoning of the zoning arrangement in the state as it was not bringing dividend of democracy to the people of the state.
Enugu Rebirth, a socio-political organisation, formed to mobilise, sensitise and conscientize the people of Enugu State on critical political, economic, cultural and social issues affecting the state, has viewed with great concern, a number of disturbing trends, especially by political gladiators as plans for the 2023 elections begins to unravel.
In a statement sent to TheBridgeNews, Sunday in Abuja, and signed by the Director-General of the Organisation, Chuka Eze, the socio-political group noted that the ultimate beneficiaries of the zoning arrangement have always been the political class.
“After carefully reviewing the journey of Enugu State in the area of social, political and economic development since the dawn of democracy in 1999, it is our considered position that the good people of Enugu State have not benefited in measurable, tangible terms from the so-called zoning of elective political offices. On the contrary, the real beneficiaries have been the political class who have found it easy and convenient to divide up political offices, and by extension, the resources and opportunities in those offices, among themselves and their cronies, at the expense of the people.
“For the incontrovertible reasons provided above, and for other justifications that will follow, we make bold to state that for the 2023 Gubernatorial, House of Assembly and National Assembly elections in the state, the good people of Enugu State should reject unequivocally any form of zoning. Since this so-called zoning idea was introduced in the state in 1999, competence, capacity and even knowledge of the needs of the people and the means to ensure the people are given enduring developmental values, have been discarded, replaced by the seasonal dominance of one perceived zone over the others.”
The socio-political group said that rather than continue on the part of zoning, the process should be made open so that the masses can play a role in who emerges as the candidate for governorship, member of the House of Assembly and other elective positions.
According to Eze, only an open process of leadership selection will produce the best candidate for any elective position.
“The desperation to entrench zoning of political offices has denied us the opportunities of presenting our Best Eleven in leadership. Having gone through the cycle of zoning for 24 years, with each senatorial zone having their son occupying the Enugu Governorship position for eight years each, the need for political inclusiveness appears to have been duly addressed and should immediately be discarded to pave the way for competence, capability and acceptance by the generality of the people.
“The people of Enugu State, on their own, want and need a leader that will embrace the entire state as one constituency. This cannot be possible through zoning, because primarily, the centrifugal undertone behind such convenient political selection processes is that it impels the candidate to see himself as responsible to the zone whose turn he is benefiting from, thereby creating unhealthy cycles of bottled-up hatred that is only unleashed when power shifts,” he said.
The group pointed that the zoning arrangement has only served to further polarized the state
“What this divisive zoning has done to Enugu State since the dawn of democracy in 1999 can be measured in the devastating psychological impacts it has had on the relationships between and among the people of the state.
“The perceived zoning arrangement has brought us to a situation where the emotional distance between the person from Ugwogo Nike, and that of the man from Agu Ekwegbe, two communities with a common boundary, has become wider than that between a man from Sokoto and his brother from Maiduguri. Enugu State has become fractured and our people are being misled to emphasise what they have been made to see as their differences at a time we should be talking of coming together to unleash the immense economic power o the state.
“We are aware of the emergence of small nationalities within the state, with contrived efforts to highlight the differences between an Nkanu man and the Nsukka man; between the Udi man and the Nkanu man and between the Udi man and the Nsukka man. To make this even more disheartening, even in the so-called Nkanu land, the Agbani man and his brother from Amaechi are struggling to live together, while in the Nsukka zone, there is also this tension between those who wish to draw the difference Nsukka people and those they classify as Ojobogene.
“Enugu Rebirth advocates for the return to a united Enugu State anchored on equity, love, trust and collective drive to work towards the manifestation of our shared prosperity for the good of all,” the DG said.
