Nigeria May Not Get To 2023 With Current Situation Of Things –Agbo

Dr. Emmanuel Agbo, Deputy National Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Secretary, PDP 2019 Election Review Committee, in this interview monitored on Arise Television, speaks on the issue of zoning ahead of the 2023 presidential election.

You are the Secretary of the Governor Bala Mohammed-led committee that reviewed the 2019 general election and how PDP fared as a political party, but what is of controversy now is the recommendation of the committee that the party should jettison the idea of zoning.

How did the committee arrive at this decision?

In the process of the review, we tried to see what we can do differently as we move towards 2023. Part of it came in as the recommendation that you just talked about. I would like to take you a little back to pre-1999.

In 1993 precisely, an election that was adjudged free and fair was annulled by the military. It created what you can call some degree of despondency that resulted in some agitations in the South-West leading to the formation of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO).

That bitterness and ill-feeling was fundamentally part of the Nigerian state until we got into 1999.

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Elders and leaders of this great nation came together and felt that there was need to critically look into that direction and look for someone of a statesman quality that would lead the state craftsmanship to unity and economic prosperity.

That resulted in all that transpired and the emergence of His Excellency and our leader, Olusegun Obasanjo.

We, as a nation again are at a crossroad and the committee in the discharge of its assignment came clearly with the fact that Nigeria is at the brink.

We are at the precipice and any other little push; very frankly, is going to take us into some catastrophe that we do not pray for.

And so, in the considered view of the committee, notwithstanding that there where submissions, we have a six geo-political zones in this country and moving back to the last 30 to 40 years, two of these zones came out very clearly that they have not had their stake at the presidency of this country.