Why presidency should shift to South in 2023 – Northern groups

Leader of the coalition of Northern Groups, CNGs, Abdul- Azeez Suleiman, has given reasons why the South should provide the next president of Nigeria comes 2023.

Suleiman said the North was indeed very angry with President Muhammadu Buhari’s government because they have not benefitted anything from him.

He added, “What needs to be done by the North is not to insist that power must remain in the region which in any case, does not even serve the interest of the larger population of northerners.

According to him, what is important at this point is for the northern political leadership to renegotiate its current alliance with the South West which has never been North’s political ally.

“The alliance is already turning out to be unhealthy. We are already calling on the northern elders and leaders to review the region’s position by realigning with our traditional political friends which are the South East and South-South.

“This has become necessary with the way the South West is going about the current friendship by being more openly antagonistic to northern interests even while they are the major beneficiaries of the Buhari administration.

“What is happening to us in the North now, are we happy that we have a Northerner as a president? We are not getting anything. So, the North will be better off with a Southern president who would provide services to everybody. It is the elite who have not allowed us to think Nigeria by making us think in terms of ethnicity and religion so that they can control us.

“What is the point of having an Igbo president when you do not have anything in the South East? What is the point of having a Northern president when all these killings are going on in the North? It is even bad for us now because when we talk, they will say we are fighting our brother but if it is a Southerner, we can talk and shout.

“In 2014, I cited an example and people agreed with me that if having a president from an area is the yardstick for development, then the North would have been the most developed.

“This is because the Northerners have held power for most of Nigeria’s existence. Why are we the most backward then? The South East has just held power just nominally during the First Republic but why then are they the most developed?

“So, all this noise about where the president comes from is just an elitist way of manipulating our thinking. Don’t we have governors from our localities? What are they doing for us? We even have local government chairmen. Are they working for us?