“Any aspirant given a party ticket to stand for an election will run for that election.” —Ebuka Onyekwelu
The 2025 Anambra State Governorship Election has remained in the front burner. With more than a year before the election, conversations around who becomes the next governor of Anambra State or if the incumbent will continue has intensified. A major part of this debate is the question of zoning. The clamour for zoning must first be seen, like it is in most cases, as a political instrument. It is not necessarily about justice and fair play, but a viable tool to access political power.
To buttress, neither the constitution of Nigeria nor the constitution of any known political party is unambiguous about support for zoning. Therefore, zoning, just like ethnicity, is a political creation. For social reasons, a power-seeker might elevate it to a major issue. However, in the real sense, zoning is pointless in the scheme of what should constitute concerns for power-seekers and voters. To put this differently, any aspirant given a party ticket to stand for an election will run for that election. In a party democracy like ours, any aspirant from anywhere considered fit and proper for the election and given the ticket of a political party for that election will stand for the election and contest. On the flip side, the choice of the voters is limited to those on the ballot, presented by participating political parties. This is final.
Therefore, the preoccupation of serious political players scheming to compete against APGA’s Soludo in 2025 must be, first, to convince their political party that they can do the job for them so that they will have the sponsorship of their party to run. The ticket holder for an election will naturally contest in the General Election. This is where the argument on zoning suffers a major defeat. If political parties are not bound to comply with zoning, why then should zoning matter to an aspirant when the party has no obligation to conform to it?
If, for the purpose of argument, the issue of zoning is entertained in the coming Anambra State Governorship election, the question is, has there been any election in the state that has been contested only by people from a particular senatorial zone? None! Throughout governorship election history in Anambra State, people from all three senatorial zones have contested the election. In the end, the person given a ticket by participating political parties stands for the General Election. When Peter Obi in 2014 led the charge that his party APGA, should give their ticket to a candidate from Anambra North senatorial zone, in that same election, Mr. Godwin Ezemo from Anambra South contested. Dr. Chris Ngige from Anambra Central contested and Sen. Ifeanyi Ubah from Anambra South contested. In the end, Willie Obiano from Anambra North also contested and won. Those were the four major candidates in that election. The following election year, Obiano retained the APGA ticket, Oseloka Obaze and Sen. Tony Nwoye from Anambra North secured the PDP and APC tickets, after a very competitive primary, contested by many other aspirants from all senatorial zones of the state. Then, in 2021, Valentine Ozigbo and Sen. Andy Uba secured PDP and APC tickets, after a highly competitive primary election in those political parties. Dr. Obiora Okonkwo from Anambra Central was Val Ozigbo’s runner-up in the PDP in 2021. The APC primary that produced Andy Uba was problematic, but it was well contested.
It is, to this extent, imperative that we remind ourselves that the coming Anambra State governorship election will not be different. Aspirants from all the senatorial zones will try their popularity in their various political parties and if their members find them worthy, they will be elected as their party’s flag bearers. Therefore, it stands to reason that the challenge is for an aspirant to sufficiently convince his party men and women to give him or her support. Once this support is sought and secured by any individual deemed qualified to hold the office, irrespective of the part of the state that he or she came from; they will stand for the election.
The next phase of this process is for the voters in the General Election to decide if they can place their hope in the candidate, notwithstanding the part of the state he or she came from. Again, whoever gets the support of the voters in terms of popular votes and meets other legal requirements for the election will be declared the winner of the election in 2025.
In the final analysis, the argument on zoning ahead of Anambra’s next year’s governorship election might not fly because it is not a binding criterion to secure the ticket of any political party and it is not the sole consideration of Anambra voters in deciding their choice candidate.
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