Anenih’s letter to Audu Ogbe dated 5th August 2002: “You will recall that the sanctity of PDP zoning arrangement was obeyed to the letter in 1998/1999 general elections. It was the zoning, which is still valid, that gave the principal officers both in the party and executive the following positions in 1998/1999:

Last week however, Chief Anenih did a complete flip-flop in a widely reported letter he wrote to the PDP’s National Working Committee, dated 14th June 2010. He said in the letter that the zoning arrangement is not sacrosanct, saying that it had been “observed more in breach than in practice especially in 2003 and 2007.”

Anenih’s letter to Audu Ogbe dated 5th August 2002, stated, “You will recall that the sanctity of PDP zoning arrangement was obeyed to the letter in 1998/1999 general elections. It was the zoning, which is still valid, that gave the principal officers both in the party and executive the following positions in 1998/1999:

National Chairman    - North; President - South; Vice President - North; President of the Senate – South; Speaker of the House of Representatives –North; National Secretary - South; Deputy Senate President –North; Deputy Speaker - South.

“As it was in 1998 up till date, only candidates from the North were allowed to contest for the post of national chairman. In the same vein, only candidates from the South collected presidential nomination forms. The only aspirant from the North –Alhaji Abubakar Rimi –withdrew from the race before the convention.

“As a result, only Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Chief Jim Nwobodo, Chief Graham Douglas and Chief Don Etiebet attended the convention in Jos and contested. Of course Chief Olusegun Obasanjo won and became presidential candidate.

“I am writing to put you on notice so that you will remember when you are considering the guidelines for the presidential primaries that the above zoning arrangement stands till 2007 when the reverse will be the case.”  

However, Chief Anenih's flip-flop last week in a letter he wrote to the PDP’s National Working Committee which was routed through the then acting national chairman Dr. Bello Haliru Mohammed before the emergence of Chief Okwesilieze Nwodo now said President Goodluck Jonathan can be a candidate in the 2011 presidential elections regardless of the PDP zoning of the office to the North.

He said late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi and Chief Barnabas Gemade had defied the zoning arrangement and picked nomination forms of the party and contested the primaries against former president Olusegun Obasanjo.

Chief Anenih’s position on zoning in 2002/2003 was apparently because, that time, he was the chief manager of then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s re-election campaign and in particular, was looking for a way to stop Vice President Atiku Abubakar from challenging Obasanjo for the PDP presidential ticket.

This time, Anenih, who has been forcefully displaced by Obasanjo as PDP BOT chairman, is trying to reposition himself for a role in President Jonathan’s efforts to overturn the policy in order to enable him contest for the 2011 ticket.