Abia North Citizens Forum has said governorship of the state should return to the zone in 2023.

In a communique signed by its leader, Ambassador E. O. Philip and eight others, at  the end of its meeting, at the weekend, the forum said Abia State is built on a tripod, insisting that equity and fairness demand that the governorship seat return to Abia North in 2023, having gone round the three senatorial zones.

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“It is only natural, fit and proper for the rationing principle to take a natural course by returning to Abia North now that the circle would be completed by 2023. The use of threat and intimidation to stop some people from pairing with others as deputy governorship aspirants is cheap and cowardly, if not unimaginable. Any attempt in whatever form by any party or group to change the rotation agreement is not only a betrayal of trust, but also an attempt to change the goal post at the middle of the match.”

The forum asked the three senatorial zones of the state not to renege on agreed rotational principle, insisting that “the various critical meetings held by well-meaning Abians that led to the ceding of Abia governorship seat to Abia South in 2015 and 2019 was a product of concession and consensus based on an agreement that the rotation principle was irrevocable.”

It also rejected the idea of the political parties zoning their governorship ticket to candidates from particular local government councils, saying the idea is mundane and does not have a place in a modern democracy.