- Says Party Yet To Zone Presidential Ticket
The National Chairman of the All-Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Abdullahi Adamu, has defended the decision of the party to peg its presidential nomination form at N100m.
He said this on Friday while addressing State House Correspondents after presenting the Ekiti APC governorship candidate, Abiodun Oyebanji, to President Muhammadu Buhari.
The former lawmaker explained that the move was to ward off unserious contenders and raise sufficient funds ahead of the upcoming elections. It is also to discourage parties that have no chance of winning elections from sponsoring individuals to play the role of spoilers, he added.
Aside from this, the APC leader also said the party has not yet taken a decision on the zoning of its presidential candidate for the 2023 election.
According to him, the decision on which part of the country should produce the party’s flagbearer was beyond him.
“I am today privileged to be the chairman of the party. The party is greater than me. The party has not made a decision and I cannot preempt what the party decision will be,” he said.
Recall that the Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF) on Thursday asked major political parties to throw the contest for their presidential tickets open to all regions, asserting that the zoning system is no longer desirable.
The ruling party had swapped its national offices between North and South, leading to the emergence of Adamu from the North Central as the national chairman.
Kaduna Governor Nasir el-Rufai just before the party’s National Convention said that even though the APC had not decided on zoning the presidential ticket, the swapping of national offices was an indication of where its presidential candidate would come from.
But when asked where the ruling party would be zoning its presidential ticket to, Adamu said taking such a decision would be the job of the entire party, which he said is bigger than himself as Chairman.
