Northern Presidential Aspirants Told to Withdraw

[Richard Akindele]

The Southern Senators Forum (SSF) yesterday called on presidential aspirants of northern extraction to stand down their interests as sacrifices for a balancing of the hold of power between the South and North.

The group also vowed to take its tour of the southern states to drum up support for the project to the states of the South-east geo-political zone.

The spokesman of the forum, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who stated this while reviewing the group's tour of the South-south, argued that "Nigeria will not end after our generation, if it will take sixteen years to redress what some people believe to be injustice to our zones, we think it is a sacrifice worth doing by our Northern brothers."

"We are calling for sacrifice from them because the argument most of them are making is that they want to be President in their own time or they want their brothers to be President."

"So we will have to look at the big picture of justice, equity and patriotism. It is not just that we want our brother to be President after all, we have had Presidents who did not develop their areas, but a President who will be acceptable to all Nigerians," he said.

According to him, at the close of the tenure of President Olusegun Obasanjo's second term, "the South would have held the presidency for fourteen years, so we are asking for another sixteen years of the presidency in the South-South and Southeast to bring the total to twenty-eight years and this will still be short of the thirty-five years of the presidency in the North".

Dismissing insinuations that the forum is working for the actualisation of a president from the South-south, and could have endorsed the Akwa Ibom State governor, Obong Victor Attah and his Rivers State counterpart, Dr. Peter Odili, the SSF spokesman reasoned that "the search for a Southern President is not limited to the South-South. We are still going to search out for one in the Southeast, but even within the two geopolitical zones, we are insisting on only a credible candidate.

"We are looking for a presidential candidate that will be acceptable to all Nigerians on the basis of his track record, somebody who has shown in the past that he has the capacity to deliver.

"Such a person should be regarded by Nigerians as being able to address the fundamental problems presently confronting the country," he further said.

Asked if the Forum was screening presidential aspirants of southern extraction, Ekweremadu said: "We are not screening the aspirants, but we are going to sensitize the people of these zones and get those who are interested to run.

"The more aspirants in the race, the merrier as we will be able to pick the best. We will not only see the aspirants in the Southeast, we will also visit the leaders of the zone. The most visible leaders are the governors, we are trying to build a consensus towards post-Obasanjo era."

This Day.