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| Northern Elders Forum |
The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) has said if it were not for the immunity enjoyed by governors, the federal government should have deployed security agencies to grill southern governors for wanting to break the country by insisting that the presidency should rotate to the South in 2023.
Deputy Chairman of NEF and former Nigerian ambassador to Switzerland, Yahaya Kwande, who spoke on Arise Television yesterday, argued that the movement of the presidency between the North and South was an arrangement by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and not between both regions.
Kwande also said northerners in PDP were the ones demanding that the presidency should remain in the North in 2023 in order to complete the eight years tenure of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. He, however stated that rotation agreements within political parties were not new, adding that it started with National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic. He said southern leaders at the time had suggested that there should be some form of rotation within the party, which led to the emergence of former President Shehu Shagari.
The former envoy said PDP had an internal arrangement that power would rotate to the South in 1999, because of the controversial death of Moshood Abiola. He stressed that it was a way to pacify the South and keep the country together.
Kwande said rotation had never been a constitutional arrangement, but parties’ plan to win election, and it was what led to the emergence of former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the time.
According to him, with Yar’Adua’s death, the two terms of the North was cut short, noting that even during the NPN convention, the chairman of the party’s position was to stay with the west, while the vice president was to come from the eastern flank, an arrangement that produced the late Adisa Akinloye and Alex Ekwueme, respectively.
He alleged that ex-President Goodluck Jonathan deprived the North of a northern president from the PDP by contesting the 2015 election, a time he said the problem started.
Kwande argued that the election of President Muhammadu Buhari was not part of the fulfilment of that arrangement, because he succeeded under the All Progressives Congress (APC), which he said had no such agreement.
While admitting that neither the South nor North could win any presidential election alone, Kwande alleged that the southern governors were “commanding” the rest of Nigeria to vote someone from that part of the country, saying it is unacceptable.
Kwande stated, “I haven’t taken the position of southern governors lightly, because if not because they are untouchable group of people in Nigeria, I would have said the government should question them because it’s like mooting the idea of breaking this country.
“If all the political parties have decided to pick their candidates from the South or from the North, they have the democratic right to do so, but do not confuse the issue as if leaders are there to dictate where the president should come. The constitution has made it very clear
“What they are now doing is like dividing the country. That (rotation) is a question of the manifesto of a political party. When have APC and PDP decided to marry their manifestos?”
He argued that people were mixing the fact that Obasanjo had an eight-year term with that of Buhari by insisting that the presidency should go back to the South.
Kwande explained, “Jonathan could have completed the two years of Yar’adua, because it is his constitutional right, because both of them were elected on that platform. But with the agreement, of which he was a party, he should now have allowed a northerner to finish the remaining term of four years to make it eight years, so that it should go back to the South.”
Kwande stated that rotational presidency remained an arrangement of PDP and not that of the northern establishment.
According to him, the northern governors never said the presidency must remain in the North, unlike the position held by their counterparts from the South.
He said, “I don’t think from what I heard from the presentation of the northern governors, they did not demand that presidency should come to the North. They are saying, follow the constitution, if all the political parties decide to select their candidates from the South or from the North, they have democratic right to do so, but let them not confuse the issue as if leaders are to dictate where the president should come.”
Kwande said, “It is the right of President Muhammadu Buhari to support anybody he likes in Nigeria from anywhere within the federation but you cannot generalise it in such a way that Buhari is asking the northerners or forcing their hands to elect a president from the South. He has no such right.
“But he has a right as a leader of his political party, as part of a way to win the election, not to go the South, of course, by all means he could. But it appears that people are confusing the issue that Obasanjo had eight-year term from the South and Buhari has now got eight years term from the North and so it should go back to the South.
“That is wrong, our constitution does not allow that. But a political party, thinking that they will win the election, like the PDP did and they are still thinking that they are being owed a term to complete the four years and to make it eight years on the platform of the PDP that they had in the South, so what is the quarrel about that.”
On whether he would support the move by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to once again seek PDP’s presidential ticket in 2023, Kwande said Atiku was very qualified to vie for the post.
According to him, apart from being ably qualified, the former vice president was also well prepared for the job.
He said, “How would you know that I am supporting him alone, I have only one vote. It depends on Nigerians. Election should be based on the arrangement and constitution of this country. You cannot wake up today and say that Atiku was born in the South and that he is a citizen, so that he can be elected. It depends on the arrangement. Even if it comes to the North, you cannot say whether it will be the North-east or North-west.”