ANPP Zones Presidency To The North.

After an exhaustive meeting that lasted all night, the national caucus of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), yesterday agreed to pick its presidential candidate in the 2011 elections from the northern part of the country. The caucus zoned the posts of the national chairman and secretary to the south and the north, respectively.

With the decisions, the race for the chairmanship of the largest opposition party in the country at tomorrow’s national convention in Abuja, is now open to the four aspirants from the southern part of the country. They are the first executive governor of Edo State, John Odigie-Oyegun (Edo); the incumbent national publicity secretary, Emma Eneukwu (Enugu); former national secretary, George Moghalu (Anambra) and billionaire businessman, Harry Akande (Oyo).

The two other aspirants from the north, namely Gambo Magaji (Gombe) and the national deputy chairman (north) Yusufu Musa (Plateau) are expected to withdraw from the race.

The meeting had been convened to streamline the number of aspirants for the chairmanship position ahead of the two-day convention. It was also necessitated by the agitation by some top northern members of the party as well as other groups, to who wanted to rezone the chairmanship seat to the north. Those at the meeting were the national chairman of the party, Edwin Ume-Ezeoke and all the members of the national working committee, state chairmen of the party, members of the Board of Trustees, the leadership of the party in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

A source at the meeting said the decisions were near unanimous as only one person voted in support of the zoning of the chairmanship position to the north.

Oyegun In The Race

However, one of the aspirants and his supporters resisted the proposal and insisted on the status quo and he subsequently voted accordingly.

“Some people tried to insist that our party chairman should come from the north but it was not a popular proposal. However, at the end of the day, everybody voted for the retention of the position in the south and the secretary in the north and our presidential candidate will come from the north also,” our source said.

Mr Eneukwu, who is also the outgoing national publicity secretary of the party, confirmed the decision during a telephone interview with our reporter yesterday.

He, however, declined to give details of the resolutions at the meeting.

Mr Odigie-Oyegun was also cautious in his response, although the former Edo governor said he was still in the race and will not step down for anybody.

Since the birth of the ANPP in 1998, two of its substantive chairmen, Mahmud Waziri and Yusuf Ali came from the north while the other two, Don Etiebet and Mr Ume-Ezeoke were from the south.

On the other hand, its first presidential candidate, Olu Falae is a southerner while Muhammadu Buhari , a northerner was its candidate in 2003 and 2007. Mr Buhari had earlier this year defected to the newly-former Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) where he hopes to contest the 2011 presidential election.