North MUST Produce President In 2015 – Northern Elders

Spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum Prof. Ango Abdullahi 

Six Northern  organisations, including the Arewa Consultative Forum and the Northern Elders’ Forum,    on Tuesday insisted that the North  must produce the nation’s  President  in  2015.
The ACF,the NEF,  Arewa Reawakening Forum, Arewa Research and Development Project, Northern Union and the Code Group , said at  a  news conference  in Kaduna, that  an existing 
agreement  that the Presidency should return to the region must be strictly followed.

NEF  spokesman and  former  Adviser on Food Security  to ex-President  Olusegun Obasanjo, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, who spoke  for  the  groups, warned that  if parties to the pact failed to adhere to it, the North  would use its numerical strength  to ensure that power returned  to it in 2015.“The North is determined and is insistent that the leadership of  this  country will rotate  to it in 2015 and  I am making that very very clear to you (journalists), Abdullahi said.

“The North on the basis of one man, one vote can keep power indefinitely in the present Nigerian state.  If it is on the basis of one man, one vote, demography shows that the North can keep power as long as  it wants because it will always win elections,”  he added.

Abdullahi, who stated that the ACF  was in the forefront of the quest by the region to have  a Northerner as  President,  added that  even the Middle Belt Forum and other groups in the region were   clear    in their  calls for a Northern President in 2015.“All of us have this very  tough and common agenda. Not that the  North  is  power hungry . No;  it (power rotation)  in 2015 will be argued on  the rational agreement that is  on  the ground today,” he explained.

The former presidential aide pointed out that it was morally wrong for President Goodluck Jonathan to contemplate contesting  in 2015  since he was aware  that   such a pact  existed.Abdullahi mentioned former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Jonathan as some of those who signed the pact. Jonathan, according to him,  signed as number 37 when he was the deputy governor of Bayelsa State.
“He (Obasanjo) was the first to sign. This particular President (Jonathan) was there as deputy governor representing the then  governor of Bayelsa State. He signed as number 37. It was found in the document,”  the NEF spokesman  claimed.

Abdullahi, a former  Vice-Chancellor  of  the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, also said that   Obasanjo started the   circumvention of  the pact by seeking a third term in office.“We  had agreed that the South will have eight years and then, the North will have eight years but when  Obasanjo saw some loopholes, he  tried to abandon the  zoning as well as the constitution to seek  third term,” the former presidential adviser alleged.

He  noted that even  after  Obasanjo’s  tenure, the North  was short-changed  due to  the death of President Umaru  Yar’Adua,  who only spent two and half years instead of eight years of two terms contained in the  said agreement.When reminded of a former Information Minister  Chief Edwin Clark’s insistence that  Jonathan  must rule in 2015, the former Vice- Chancellor,   argued that the South-South  where he (Clark) hails from is “a tiny enclave of a few people, perhaps not bigger than Kaduna State.”

Abdullahi   added that  the North  would have continued to dominate the political turf if not for the  voluntary sacrifices it  had continued to make   in the cause  of the nation’s  history.He said,  “Some of us who participated in constitutional conferences  from 1987 till  the last one – the Political Reform Conference – accepted that every part of this country  should  have a taste  of  leadership and this is  the basis of the acceptance of the rotation between the  North and the South.”

He explained  that  it  was based on the afforementioned that the South through   Obasanjo had its share of the eight years of two terms  before  handing  over to Yar’Adua, who could not complete his own eight years before his death.

Abdullahi said, “It is obvious the constitution says if the President for whatever reason   is not  there, his  deputy will take over. And this  was why Jonathan  as  vice-president then  became  the President. We thought   at the end of that four years, the North  should   take over. If we didn’t have eight years because of that truncation, at least,  we  should have  had six years  but they said no. 

“So, it is mainly on the grounds  that first, there was an agreement for  rotation of power and that there is immorality in their refusal   to  hand over to us that we are insisting on clinching power in 2015. The North is insisting  that the Presidency will come whether on the basis of rotation or on the basis of voting power since  we have the voting power to make sure that it (Presidency) comes  to the North .”

He stated that the  region would pick a competent  person   from  either “the core-north  or Middle
Belt” as a candidate for the presidential poll  in 2015.