APC leader Okechukwu says zoning is not self‑defeating and criticizes Atiku’s denial.

A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, on Tuesday rejected a statement attributed to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar that zoning is “self‑defeating,” describing the claim as a classic case of self‑denial.

Okechukwu noted that Atiku, as a former vice‑president, was among the most prominent beneficiaries of the zoning arrangement that has shaped Nigeria’s political landscape.

The former Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON) delivered his comments in a state interview after journalists asked him to clarify the former vice‑president’s position.

He said: “How can one of the foremost beneficiaries of the zoning convention suddenly deny its profound significance in promoting national cohesion, inclusion, equity, peace, and justice?

In the public domain there is throughout history the law with its legal teeth and the convention with its moral weight, governing human affairs. If there was no zoning arrangement, could Atiku have become Vice President?

Has he forgotten why he stormed out of the PDP presidential primary process in 2014 and joined us in APC, after President Goodluck Jonathan emerged as the party’s candidate?”

Commenting further on Atiku’s remark that, “The first and most obvious question is this: how does a Southern opposition candidate realistically unseat a sitting Southern president,” Okechukwu called the statement regrettable identity politics, “the very tendency the zoning convention was designed to minimise,” and added that such rhetoric is “least expected from a statesman.”

He also criticised Atiku’s argument that, “By 2027, the South would have held presidential power for approximately 18 years in the Fourth Republic, compared to about 10 years for the North.”

Okechukwu said the statement reflects “selective amnesia, as it ignores the historical reality that Northern Nigeria presided over the affairs of the country for more than four decades since our independence in 1960.”

“And equity cannot be discussed in fragments or based on convenient arithmetic.”