Confab recommends Presidency, Governorship & Senatorial Rotation

THE Committee on Political Restructuring and Forms of Government, yesterday, recommended that the presidency and governorship should be rotated among the geo-political zones and senatorial zones respectively and the provision should be enshrined in the electoral law and constitution of political parties.

The recommendation came after a robust but heated debate by members. While backing rotation, Senator Femi Okurounmu, from the South-West delegate stunned members of his committee, when he claimed that former President Olusegun Obasanjo did not win the 1999 Presidential election.

Okuroumu, who hails from the same Ogun State as Obasanjo, maintained that Obasanjo's emergence as president was planned and executed by the powers-that-be at the time to assuage growing tension occasioned by the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election presumably won by late Chief Moshood Abiola.

"Obasanjo did not win the election; he was anointed by the powers-that-be to pacify the South-West over the annulment of June 12 election," he said while backing the rotational principle, advancing that the system would give every zone the opportunity to produce president.

To realise the objective, Okuroumu, who chaired the Presidential Advisory Committee on the conference, suggested that the new principle should be embedded in the Electoral Act and in the constitutions of the various political parties.

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