The Chairman of Northern Elders Forum, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, has stated categorically any party that field a northern candidate will have the region’s support for presidency come 2020.
According to him, democracy empowers the majority though the minority will have their say.
“I think there is nothing wrong at all if the north keeps power for century because democracy is all about numbers and we have it,” he told the Sun in an interview.
Abdullahi believes the eight-year time of the late President Umar Yar’ Adua truncated by death, and completed by Jonathan, must be settled fully.
“You see with the support of the north they succeeded, and in 2015 the south-south wanted to cheat the north again. This is a clear indication that some people did not care about the right of others in the north. That was why we in the Northern Elders Forum fought against it,” he said.
“I kept saying since and will repeat it that any party that gives us a candidate of northern extraction will be supported in 2023.”
On power rotation, the former minister said the PDP originated the idea, though a couple of the members, the late Abubakar Rimi and Barnabas Gemade opposed it—basically because the 1999 constitution does not recognize it.
Which is to say those expecting power to shift southwest in 2023 are kidding.
Speculations are mounting that the APC national leader Bola Tinubu, Gov. Kayode Fayemi, among others, are hoping to contest the 2023 presidency.
That is if power shifts to region which is not as politically active as the north.
“From my personal experience, I can count three occasions where the issue of power shift was determined by the plurality of the voters,” he said.
He cited ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s contest with former SGF Olu Falae, in which the north swayed the election; then the 2015 election which Jonathan lost.
“Eighty-one percent of Buhari votes in 2015 and 2019 came from the North. Though, I am not a card-carrying member of any political party, I am not sure whether APC has any arrangement like this.”
The elder statesman insisted that th spirit of power rotation died in PDP that introduced it since Jonathan contested in 2011, not minding the north had yet to complete its eight years as a result of Ya r’ Adua’s death.