Dear Mathias,

I read your piece captioned above in the daily trust newspapers dated Wednesday,July21,2010 and feel obliged to write and engage you with my views albeit the article was full of anger and somewhat abusive but has such an intellectual brio in content.
To start with am not a PDP card carrying member neither am I a member of any political party but I found the agreement entered in 1999 by the PDP to rotate offices between North and South after each eight years interesting and commendable. This is possibly the only way every part of the country would have a feel at the presidency, I feel if this is not done the coveted office might just revolve around a particular zone for ever.
To my mind all political parties in the country should emulate this noble cause and even extend the idea to go beyond the Presidency so that Governorship seats and Council chairmen seats should be rotated in both the states and Local Government areas. This has already been enshrined in our constitution in form of Federal Character and other extant policies.
I really do not know from which State you come from but for me am from Katsina, resident in Kaduna State and if you are conversant with the politics of the state I don’t know what you can do to a southern Kaduna indigene have a shot at the Government House; or if you are conversant with the politics of Kogi State what you can do to the Okun or even the Ibira man have a shot at the Government House, these examples are abound in the country. The point here is that it is democratically impracticable for a certain group of Nigerians especially the minorities to ever be elected into the coveted offices if zoning or power rotation or even constitutional balance as President Jonathan would say is not put in place.
Iam surprised you did not mention that zoning will breed incompetence as many writers oppose to it insinuate. In this time of our National development we do not need the African Union or even the United Nation for that matter to tell us who is competent to lead us to the promised land we have to do it ourselves and I tell you no ethnic group in Nigeria has the monopoly of competent people, they are so ubiquitous.
By the way, I share the sentiment of some of you that President Goodluck Jonathan is free to contest the presidency in 2011 but going by the dictates of the PDP constitution and the rotational agreement of the party he cannot but surely he can find solace elsewhere.

Thank you,

ISA AHMED