Kaduna state governor Nasir El-Rufai has announced that the system of hiring leaders for political offices through zoning by major political parties partly accounts for the country’s stagnation under the democratic system of governance.
The governor’s position was made known at the Nigerian Economic Summit on Wednesday in Abuja, the nation’s capital. He opined that irrespective of the logic behind rotating political positions in the country, the system should be done away with and focus redirected to sourcing for the best hands across the board.
According to the former FCT Minister, “There is no country in the world that has made progress in the last 50 years that rotates its leaders.”
He continued, “I do not believe that we should be driven in our politics and economics by distribution whether or not there is a logic behind it.”
The governor, who had only three months ago endorsed the advocacy to zone the 2023 Presidency to the South, added: “I think we should move away from this fixation about distribution to selecting or picking the best person to get the job done.”
Continuing he said, “Right now, we are distributing this and we are not making any progress.”
Many political stakeholders have called on the major parties to restrict their search for the next president to the southern part of the country- a position the governor earlier supported, advising northern leaders to sit out the 2023 presidential contest.
“In Nigerian politics, there is a rotation system, where everyone agrees that if the north rules for eight years, the south will rule for eight years,” he told the BBC Hausa service in August.
“That is why I came out and said that after President Buhari’s eight-year term, no northerner should run for the Presidency. Let the southerners also have eight years,” he said at the time.
