Urges Jonathan to reject APC’s overtures
Emmanuel Addeh
Elder statesman and leader of Afenifere, a Yoruba socio-cultural group, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, yesterday maintained that the southern part of Nigeria will not kowtow to the north to get the presidency in 2023.
Adebanjo, who spoke on ARISE News Night yesterday, noted that it should not be debated whether the south should take over the mantle of leadership after President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure, because it is the fair and equitable thing to do.
Since 1999, the arrangement of rotating the presidency between both regions has been practiced, explaining that any attempt to overturn that agreement remains unacceptable.
According to him, since the military upturned the 1963 constitution, which gave all parts of Nigeria equal rights, making the position go round between the south and north had helped in dousing tensions.
“Don’t let us change the narrative. We should not pretend as if we don’t know what the argument is about. Why are the southern governors insisting that it must come to the south? It’s because that’s what we have been practicing.
“After Olusegun Obasanjo became president, Umar Yar’adua came in, after Yar’adua, then Goodluck Jonathan, after him Buhari and after Buhari, it should come back to the south. What’s confusing about that?
“What the southern governors are simply saying is that it’s our own turn according to what has been obtaining in the past which is on record. Don’t let’s pretend not to know the issues.
“We have been doing this thing by rotation. It must come because that is the agreement, that is the practice. And that’s the issue. This is a country of various nationalities. We are saying let this thing rotate and that’s why we have federalism. But the military came and distorted it,” he argued.
He reiterated his often held position that Nigeria should return to the 1963 federal constitution, pointing out that the military constitution which replaced that body of laws was put together by the military comprising mainly people from a certain part of the country and populated by a particular religion.
“And it’s because some of us want to remain in the country, we have said let us agree on a constitution or send us back to where you met us (1963 constitution). What led to rotation was to reduce the tension caused by the military.
“ But if someone says they can dictate who will be the president and we should come and now and kowtow before you, before you grant it, because it’s your right? That’s not possible.
“This should be a federation of equal partners and it must be on agreed terms. That is the issue. This constitution must be balanced. We must be equal partners. The idea of a small ethnic group dominating the others is unacceptable,” he opined.
He also advised Jonathan not to be tempted to join the All Progressives Congress (APC), saying that it was a divide-and-rule tactics which the South must resist.
He added that Jonathan’s silence over the matter remains a huge disappointment, insisting that the former Nigerian president must not fall for the grand plan to deceive the Southern part of the country.
