Delta Governorship: Zoning Not Producing Best Candidates -CRDC

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Centre for Research and Democratic Governance says continuous zoning of the governorship position in Delta state has not paved way for the best candidate to emerge.

Its Executive Director, Dr. Akpesiri Eghwujovbo, said in a statement on Monday that only the party in power in the state had thrived on the foundations of zoning, contending that with the manner party primaries were being conducted, it was difficult for zoning to achieve desired results.

“Zoning as a concept often employed by many politicians in both its theoretical and practical categories, is a negative phenomenon that conveys the ideological notion of a hegemonic superstructure. The very idea of zoning in Delta State therefore conflicts with its known assumed characterization, as its content is attuned to the realisation of the objectives of a single individual.

“It is never designed as a consensus of vested stakeholders who are equally more concerned for an upward mobile development of personnel and infrastructures of Delta State with Asaba as capital.

“Construction of a maze of roads for the capital city as well as drainages which should naturally attract governmental intervention for a state capital that shares a similar geographical destiny with Lokoja, a city situated below the river level of the lower Niger, only began with the government of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.

“This obvious indifference to Asaba reflects the idiosyncratic attitude of what the zoning agenda is intended to accomplish”, Eghwujovbo said, just as he frowned at a situation where an ethnic group would continue to preach marginalization where such does not exist.

“Ethnicity is the product of actions undertaken by ethnic groups as they shape and reshape their group definition. It utilizes identity and culture as basic building blocks for both national and sub-national development. What makes the issue of identity particularly acute is that it touches not only on politics but also on economics 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 agitating for zoning to desist from doing so as the incumbent Governor Ifeanyi Okowa did not emerge as a product of zoning by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015 PDP zoning as claimed in some quarters.

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