An elder statesman, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, says no genuine politician from the North would oppose the South producing the president in 2023.
He said it was a known fact among the political elite that power should rotate between the South and North every eight years.
He added that ex-President Goodluck Jonathan lost his re-election bid in 2015 after failing to honour an agreement that he would step down for a Northern candidate to complete the term of his late boss, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
Iwuanyanwu said that since President Muhammadu Buhari, a Northerner, would have completed his eight years by 2023, it was the South’s turn to produce the president.
According to him, plots by some Northern elements to keep power beyond 2023 would only breed instability in the polity.
In a chat with Vanguard, the elder statesman said:
My feeling is that they know the truth. I know that they know the correct thing. They know that the presidency has stayed eight years in the north and by the mutual agreement and by the consensus as agreed by politicians it will now come to the South. And in the South, we have the South West; we have South South and South East.
The South West has produced, South South has produced and it is only the South East that has not produced. So by every law of justice and equity it should be that of the South East. Any Nigerian who is a true Christian; any Nigerian who is a true Moslem will know that a good relationship can only survive when it is based on justice, honesty and fairness. I don’t think any true Christian or any true Moslem can say that the presidency should remain in the North because it should be in the South. You can’t build an election on falsehood. I understand the reason Jonathan, an incumbent lost, was because he had an agreement with the North to let him serve the residue of the tenure of late Musa Yar’Adua.
But that was not known to us in the party. And you could see that when he lost nobody went to court. Even those of us who are leaders of the party did not go to court because we felt if we had known there was such an agreement we couldn’t have allowed him to contest at all. The truth about it is that the honest politicians, the genuine politicians in this country, those who want to preserve the unity of this country will not say that the presidency should be in the North. It should be in the South.
He added that for the South East to produce the president in 2023, its political elite must swing into action to convince other zones to back its ambition.
Iwuanyanwu noted:
The issue now is that the South East should talk to the South South, South West, and the Northern region and prevail on them to allow us have the presidency in 2023. And I want to reiterate the importance of this journey. Zoning is a very key element in the unity of this country and the reason is this; before 1st January 1914, we had Northern and Southern Nigeria but on the 1st of January, Lord Luggard amalgamated these two regions. Obviously, there are cultural, religious and ethnic differences, there are many differences. Under normal condition people should come together and agree on how they would accept the federation but it was not done. Now, it has created a problem; in subsequent years one part is larger and can procreate more by marrying many wives while the other part by their religion and culture cannot marry too many wives and can’t get many children. I believe that the population in the North is bigger than that of the South because if people can have four wives and get too many children why will their population not be much. If there was a negotiation at the conclusion of the amalgamation in 1914, people in the South could have negotiated a formula that will make them have a say in the affairs of this country and not to allow only one part to dominate. The danger in any federation where one part is dominating is that even that one part that is dominating cannot be comfortable. It is just like in a situation where only one man is rich and any other person is poor, you cannot be comfortable. The truth about everything in life is fairness, equity; live and let’s live. Let there be fairness.
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