Governor Nasir El-rufai of Kaduna state has said the zoning process among political parties would not solve the economic problems facing the country.
El-rufai said this on Tuesday when he spoke at a plenary session on “Rethinking Sub-National Competitiveness” at the ongoing Nigerian Economic Summit.
Zoning the presidency between the north and south has remained a norm in the country’s uninterrupted two-decade electoral process since 1999.
Ahead of the 2023 election, there have been calls for the presidency to return to the South.
But El-Rufai argues that leaders should not be selected by zones as this “will lead to inefficiency”.
He said: “Zoning in political parties cannot solve the economic problems we are facing. Selecting the best person to get the job done will benefit everyone.”
“The best we can do is to give everyone an equal opportunity,”
“There is no country in the world that has made progress in the last 50 years that rotates its leaders. I think if we move away from this fixation about distribution to selecting or picking the best person to get the job done… when the job is done, everybody benefits.
“Right now, we are distributing this and we are not making any progress because the focus is on distribution.”