DELTA GOVERNORSHIP RACE: Zoning Not Throwing Up Best Candidate.

"The continuous fixation with zoning by some elements of the Delta state PDP cannot pave the way for a better candidate to emerge"....Dr Akpesiri Eghwujovbo.

"The idea of zoning continues to conflict with the party's position about putting its best political feet forward".  

The Centre for Research and Democratic Governance has expressed worry that the continuous fixation with zoning by some elements of the Delta state PDP cannot pave the way for a better candidate to emerge.

The Executive Director of the Centre, Dr Akpesiri Eghwujovbo, said in a statement on Monday that the idea of zoning continues to conflict with the party's position about putting its best political feet forward.  

Eghwujovbo pointed out that zoning, going by the way the party's primary elections are conducted, is difficult to give any desired results.

Proposing his position,  Dr Eghwujovbo  said “Zoning as a concept often employed by many political parties in both its theoretical and practical categories, is a negative phenomenon that conveys the ideological notion of a hegemonic superstructure."

Eghwujovbo argues that “The very idea of zoning in Delta State Peoples Democratic Party conflicts with its known assumed characterisation, as its content is attuned to the realisation of the objectives of a single individual.

He said “Zoning as a metrics for political representation in a state like Delta can only promote idiocy, reclination, hedonism that can be counter productive to the overall need of personnel and infrastructural development of the State.

“ He insisted that Asaba capital city development has been sacrificed at the instance of zoning because everyone who comes as Governor wants to develop his Local government  area first before Asaba. He said because Asaba  shares a  geographical destiny with Lokoja, a city situated below the river level of the lower Niger, only makes it imperative for focus to be placed in the development of the endagered capital city."  “The obvious indifference to Asaba capital city development reflects the idiosyncratic attitude of what the zoning agenda is intended to accomplish,” the statement quoted Eghwujovbo as saying.

He frowned at a situation where an ethnic group would continue to insist on zoning where there was no evidence of the existence of any such agreement. He contrasted ethnic identities to zoning and said “ unlike zoning, Ethnicity is a product of actions undertaken by ethnic groups as they shape and reshape their group definition.

He said “ Ethnicity utilizes identity and culture as basic building blocks for both national and sub-national orientations.

“What makes the issue of identity particularly acute, is that it touches not only on politics but also on economy and the organizational capacity for a self-generating and sustainable development from within.

“So, more than anything else, ethnicity serves as a dynamic, constantly evolving property of both individual identity and group organization.”

He called on those clamouring for zoning to desist from doing so as even the sitting Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa never emerged as a product of a 2015 PDP zoning as clamoured in some quarters.