Yahaya Bello, the Kogi Governor who is gunning to be Nigeria’s president in 2023, has criticized the demand by the Southern Governors for the presidency to be zoned to their region.
Speaking in Abuja on Friday, Yahaya, whose presidential campaign posters once flooded the nation’s capital, said the call by the governors was “unconstitutional”.
What the country needs now is “a President of Nigeria and not of any zone,” Bello said.
He made the comments at the start of a workshop for political and crime reporters.
Bello’s comments were a reaction to the call by the 17 governors of the Southern Region, who at their meeting in Lagos this week called, among other things, for the presidential ticket to be zoned to the region come 2023.
“The Forum reiterates its commitment to the politics of equity, fairness and unanimously agrees that the presidency of Nigeria be rotated between Southern and Northern Nigeria and resolved that the next president of Nigeria should emerge from the Southern Region,” the governors said in a communique they issued at the end of their meeting in Lagos on July 5.
According to Bello, a rotational presidency is alien to Constitution and political parties in the country.
“The Nigeria of today deserves the best. Nigeria is a ship or a flight that requires the best captain to steer or lead the affairs of the nation to a desirable destination.
“I will suggest that we should allow the best candidate to emerge who will unify this country? Who will solve the problems that we are facing today?
Bello argued that the question of who succeeds President Muhammadu Buhari should be based on who will build on the president’s legacy.
“If zoning will solve our problem as at the time President Olusegun Obasanjo was the President two times, all the problems of the South should have been solved.
“As at the time President Musa Yar’dua of blessed memory came on board, the whole problems of the North should have been solved. Or when it returned back to the South-south, the problems of Niger Delta should have gone,” Bello said.
“When we are talking of democracy, it is about free choice. And it is about the number.
“Let the majority be allowed the free will to choose who they want. Let political parties not limit Nigerians to who they want to elect into offices.
“When you look at it, I think it is unconstitutional. Not in our own constitution APC and it is not there in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 as amended.
“We cannot be picking and choosing when it suits us. If we should continue on this sentiment of rotation of presidency to this region or to that region, I said let us do it perfectly. In the interest of fairness, equity and justice, if that is the angle you want to come from, fine.
“Let us go on the table and look at it. And we should not just look at it from 1999 but let us go back to 1960.
“From the independence that we Nigerians have been leading ourselves, let extrapolate all the various leaders we have heard at the national level you will discover that all the geopolitical zones as they exist today, have at one time or the other occupied the position of the presidency, either as President or vice president. The North-central has been shortchanged.”