Zoning: S’East PDP rejects SGF slot

Posted by admin Party Politics, Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP), South-East Friday, May 20th, 2011

The South-East zonal working committee of the Peoples Democratic Party has declared that the zone would not be comfortable with only the slot of Secretary to the Government of the Federation, zoned to it by the Peoples Democratic Party expanded national caucus.

Addressing journalists yesterday in Abuja, zonal secretary of the party, Chief Vincent Opalaeke diclosed that besides the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives, chieftains of PDP are also disenchanted that certain strategic ministries are always reserved for other geo-political zones, while the south- east is consistently denied.

Opalaeke particularly mentioned Ministries of Environment, Works and the FCT and maintained that until the imbalances are redressed,, the whole essence of equity and fairness being professed by government will amount to nothing.

The zonal secretary said that a meeting of the leadership of the party in the zone which comprises of the entire PDP governors, ministers and top office holders from the zone is sheduled to hold in Enugu next weekend where a position of the zone will be made known to the national leadership of the PDP. “The truth is that we have a far more issues more than the issue of zoning of speakership or the office of the SGF. Ordinarily the national chairmanship is supposed to come from the south east, but at the material time, we did not want our attention to be diverted because of that, nobody wants to put it to the front burner but soon after the election, people are beginning to talk about it.”
However, we discovered that there are very many positions that have never come to the south-east such as minister of FCT, Works, and Environment.

The zone has never been treated well. You see, that is why we want to take the whole issue holistically, it is not just about speakership or party chairmanship that rightly belongs to the zone or the issue of SGF or deputy speakership.
“The entire southeast will be meeting very soon and they will come up with a position that will ultimately address these issues. You can be assured that our position will not be myopic and will address these issues in such a way that it will not affect the unity of the nation.”

Chief Okpalaeke defended the incoherent responses of the southeast leadership over the zoning controversy and submitted that “we know what our entitlements are. There is no dispute of where the National chairmanship is zoned to, the point we are making is that it is not that alone, there are other things that south-east is entitled to. What you feel in the zone is not a discordant tones, it is people pouring out their heart. “The duty of the leaders is to bring together these arguments, discuss it and agree on a position on what will be the best for the people in the circumstance. Now if we start insisting on getting the speakership or chairmanship and because of that lose other things that we are clamouring for, it will not be the best for us.

“So the leadership will meet in less than one week and it is not good to pre-empt the outcome of that meeting.”
He was however evasive on the position of the zonal executive on the SGF slot.

-Sunwp_posts