By Jerry Uwah
Lagos
A former vice president and contender for the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential ticket, Atiku Abubakar, has said that he did not believe in zoning the presidency between parts of the country as a policy.
He said the president could come from anywhere.
Atiku, who was fielding questions from editors in an interactive session in Lagos on Sunday, said he believed all the geo-political zones in the country could produce the nation’s president.
The former vice-president is seeking to vie for the presidency in the 2015 general elections on the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He said: “There is no zoning in APC constitution. It is a free contest. Today, the president should come from any part of the country.
“Even the PDP may no longer believe in zoning. It is up to Nigerians to vote for whoever they want.”
He said the insistence by politicians that the South must produce the president in 1999 emanated from the fact that the military did not allow a Southerner who was elected president to rule the country.
The former vice-president said: “Now that the imbalance has been corrected with former President Olusegun Obasanjo having two terms in the Presidency, voters should be allowed to choose their president from any part of the country.”
Speaking on the funding of the war against insurgency in the North-east, Atiku said the federal government did not need the proposed foreign loan of $1 billion to win the war.
He said the Obasanjo administration fought insurgency when oil price was $30 per barrel, adding that with oil price at more than $100 per barrel government did not need any foreign loan to crush the insurgency if the nation’s income was well managed.
On the contention that the war against insurgency might hamper the 2015 general elections, he said if Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, which were in full-blown war could conduct elections, there was no way an insurgency which was affecting only a few local governments in two states in the North-east could pose a threat to elections in 2015.
Apparently referring to the encounter between the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, and the House of Representatives, the former vice-president said if he became president, he would sack any minister who refused to honour the invitation of the National Assembly, adding that it was a gross abuse of the nation’s constitution.
Atiku lamented over the level of crude oil theft in the country, stressing that what was stolen was more than Ghana’s entire daily output.