{"id":142519,"date":"2019-08-10T11:03:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-10T10:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=142519"},"modified":"2019-08-10T17:03:34","modified_gmt":"2019-08-10T16:03:34","slug":"el-rufai-kicks-against-zoning-ahead-of-2023-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=142519","title":{"rendered":"El-Rufai kicks against zoning ahead of 2023 elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/El-Rufai-claims-Northern-Nigeria-is-backward-poor-while-South-is-developing.jpg\"><\/p>\n<div id=\"mvp-content-main\">The Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has called for the idea of zoning of political offices to be abandoned in favour of competence.<\/p>\n<p>El-Rufai offered his thoughts in a prologue titled, \u2018Defeating a Determined Incumbent \u2013 The Nigerian Experience\u2019, which he contributed to a book \u2013 Power of Possibilities and Politics of Change in Nigeria \u2013 written by the Director-General of the Progressives Governors\u2019 Forum, Salihu Lukman.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of the 2023 elections, there are already talks about the South producing the next president, with President Muhammadu Buhari from the North currently serving his second term.<\/p>\n<p>Some key political offices at state levels are also rotated among the various ethnic groups or zones.<\/p>\n<p>But El-Rufai has now described the zoning of political offices as a barrier to political equality.<\/p>\n<p>He said, \u201cEven with our success in the 2015 elections, there is room for improvement. Barriers to political equality, such as our seemingly entrenched though informal rule for zoning candidacies according to regions of origin, need to be de-emphasised and ultimately abandoned in favour of an emphasis on qualification, competence and character.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe financing of parties, candidates and campaigns remains opaque.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany African countries are marked by savage inequalities, and a handful of individuals have the wherewithal to hold the process hostage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe must work towards funding parties via capped and fully disclosed donations and annual dues payable by every registered party member.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has called for the idea of zoning of political offices to be abandoned in favour of competence. El-Rufai offered his thoughts in a prologue titled, \u2018Defeating a Determined Incumbent \u2013 The Nigerian Experience\u2019, which he contributed to a book \u2013 Power of Possibilities and Politics of Change [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":133594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,3,4],"tags":[11471,11057,62],"class_list":["post-142519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-more","category-news","category-politics","tag-2023-election","tag-elrufai-2","tag-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/133594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}