Amid controversy over the propriety of rotational presidency between
North and South, Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai has said no northerner
should contest for the presidency in 2023.
El-Rufai expressed his personal opinion on what has become a divisive
subject, dismissing insinuations that he was interested in the race.
The governor, who made the
statement in an interview with BBC Hausa Service, had also made a similar
remark last year.
His latest statement came on the heels of Alhaji Mamman Daura’s
assertion that merit should determine who becomes President instead of zoning.
Daura, President Muhammadu Buhari’s nephew aired his views also in an interview
with BBC Hausa Service.
El-Rufai said: “In Nigerian politics, there is a system of rotation, in
which everyone agrees that if the north rules for eight years, the south will
rule for eight years.
That is why I came out and said that after President Buhari has been in
office for eight years, no northerner should run for office. Let the
Southerners also have eight years. If you look at how I am, I don’t take anyone
to work with me for the zone he came from. The eligibility I look at is if who
is entrusted to the public will hold it properly. It has been said that I have
loved the presidency since I was a minister in the FCT. This is nonsense. I do
not want the Nigerian presidency. God gives power, whether you like it or not,
if he wants it, He will give it to you, but I have never sought the presidency
of Nigeria, no one can say I have ever sought it”.
Nigeria operates an unwritten
rotational presidency between north and south. Of the major political blocs in
the country, the South-East has not produced president since 1999.
Meanwhile, governor of Imo State,
Sen. Hope Uzodinma has declared that the nation would be better off if merit is
allowed to drive the processes of electing public office holders.
He spoke in Owerri, when he
received in audience the Coalition of Ethnic Nationality Youth Leaders in
Nigeria, who visited him. His words: “I will rather see a situation where merit
is allowed to drive the process of determining who occupies a public office in
the country rather than where you come from. I think merit should drive the
political process because the nation will be better off for it. We must use our
diversity to strengthen national unity not to divide the nation. We should find
unity in our diversity by believing in each other”.
He charged the youths to always
support the Federal Government under President Buhari who he described as the
most youth-friendly president so far in the country. Uzodinma said despite all
challenges, President Buhari gave the youths a sense of belonging through
several forms of empowerment such as N-Power, political appointments, agric
loans, skills and youth fund initiative.
