As a strategy to wrestle power from the ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA in Anambra State, come the 2025 governorship election, the All Progressives Congress (APC) Elders Forum has insisted that zoning should remain as generally agreed by all the political parties.
Rising from a meeting in Awka, with Chief Innocent Obi as its Chairman, the forum declared that anybody who tried to scuttle the zoning arrangement would be doing so at his or her own risk.
Within the APC, candidates from Anambra North and Anambra Central have declared interest in contesting the 2025 Governorship ticket of the party, raising concerns over the unity of the party after the primaries.
According to the unwritten zoning arrangement in the state, Anambra South has another four years remaining, before it gets to the turn of Anambra Central Senatorial Zone.
Chief Obi, who spoke on behalf of the elders drawn from the 21 Local Government Areas of the state, assured that the elders were mobilizing daily at the grassroots level in readiness for the upcoming gubernatorial election.
He said the forum was busy preferring solutions to naughty issues that could bring problems to the election.
The body language of the elders was that the zoning to Anambra South should be sacrosanct.
“We’re there, we’re working and we have a cordial relationship with the state executive of the party.
“Whatever you do, you have to face the court of public opinion. There was an agreement to the effect that this is the way things should be going in Anambra state.
“In Imo state, all the political parties gathered together for what they, I think, called equity charter. The idea is if you take, I take. If you take all, you know what it means.
“For me, an agreement is an agreement whether written or not. There’s a system already at work in Anambra state. Anybody who denies that is not telling the truth. As elders, we should say it the way it is.
“An arrangement is on the ground. During the 2022 election, the party that pretended that zoning was nonsense suffered for it. They suffered because someone who contested under their platform did not come from where that post should go.
“Whatever decision our party comes up with, the elders must go with them because we’re under them.
“There’s an arrangement on the ground, if the party touches it, there’s nothing the elders can do. But our prayer is that the party will not tamper with the arrangements on the grounds. We believe that anybody who has taken his turn should shift.
“The elders will be pleased if the candidate comes from the South. If you ask me, the South has done four years and the South has four years extra,” he concluded.
One of the elders, Mr Okey Chukwuogo who also spoke said the zoning started with the former Governor of the state, Mr Peter Obi.
He said that Obi presented the zoning arrangement to all the stakeholders in the state including the town unions and traditional rulers who he said endorsed the system.
“Then if all these bodies endorsed it, can anybody say Anambra Governorship seat is not zoned? I’m saying that there’s zoning, but power is not given, it’s taken,” he added.
