02/07/2025
The Batter For Power: The Call for Zoning To Nasarawa West And Political Stability Agenda
By Ibrahim Akwashiki
***
Less than two years to the 2027 general elections, the political atmosphere is becoming tense, with a hue and cry for leadership. The minority are advocating for participation, while the majority are calling for a level playing ground with no compromise to emotional appeal.
Stakeholders are divided on the grounds of power rotation arrangements across states of the federation. Unwavering in the argument is the call for a free-for-all participation at the expense of equity or fairness to marginalized segments. However, there is growing consensus among the discerning that unless people feel involved and given equal opportunities to the mantle of leadership, then feelings of marginalization and injustice sow the seeds of discord in any society.
In Nasarawa State, at a zonal stakeholders meeting in Keffi organized by former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Abdullahi Adamu, the elder statesman said power rotation was a gentleman’s agreement reached by the state's stakeholders in 1996. For peace, stability, and equity, this arrangement must be respected.
Senator Adamu suggested that stakeholders must stand up to take up their birth rights, arguing that it was a constitutional right for all to contest, but to align with the existing zoning arrangement, power must be shifted to Keffi zone for political stability and unity of the state.
This guidance by the former governor was greeted with resounding applause and endorsement by key stakeholders from the zone, including the APC National Legal Adviser, the Minister of Women Affairs, current and former top government officials, APC gubernatorial aspirants, and leadership of the APC across the zone.
From history, the state was first governed democratically by Abdullahi Adamu from Nasarawa West for a consecutive eight-year term, succeeded by Aliyu Akwe-Doma from Nasarawa South, who ruled for four years, and Tanko Almakura, who took over power from the former on the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and ruled for eight years, which is believed to have contravened the unwritten zoning arrangement of the Nasarawa stakeholders. This has reinforced the southern zone's governorship strength to have held power for twelve years.
In 2019, as calls continued to amplify for equity despite Nasarawa North's lean demographic strength, power was shifted to the zone to accommodate all interests and to cement cohesion. The incumbent, Abdullahi Sule from Akwanga, came and took over the reins of power from Umaru Tanko Al-Makura to lead the state.
As Sule rounds off his second term in office, the growing demand for power to be rotated in accordance with the 1996 gentleman's agreement agreed upon by the agitators who worked thick and thin for the creation of the state from the then Plateau, as a result of political dominance and marginalization, has become wild and pervasive.
Again, history cannot be forgotten. In 2014, a tense violence broke out in the state under the influence of the ethnically-colored political tension in the guise of