2023: ‘What Right Has The North To Dictate Who Becomes President?’

The leader of the Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, has slammed the North for claiming to have the numerical advantage to dictate who becomes the president.

Naija News reports that Adebanjo said this while speaking on Monday during a public lecture themed, ‘Nationalism and nation-building in Nigerian history,’ held at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs on Victoria Island, Lagos.

The Afenifere leader also slammed some southerners who think they cannot become president if they do not get the total support of the north.

According to Adebanjo, for Nigeria to remain one and leave peacefully an agreement must be reached between everyone.

He said, “It was said that the South-East must come to negotiate with the North because politics is a game of numbers. My case is – and I told people yesterday – the case for the East is not to beg for a favour; it is their right. Yet, each time I hear that they should go around because the North has the population, what fraudulent population? You can’t sell that to me.

“They tell us to work together but unfortunately because they now have produced a president at the helm of affairs, they say ‘no one can become president except you come to the North and unfortunately, some southerners have been brainwashed that they can’t do anything except they bow to the North. I don’t believe it.

“What right has the North to dictate who will become our president? We were brought together not by peace, not by agreement, they forced us together and we agreed, so to continue to live together in peace must be by agreeable terms. The East has the right not because he is Igbo but because it is in Nigeria. The principle of Afenifere is on ideological basis and principle of rightness, inclusiveness and not any sentiment.”

On his part, the President of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Prof. George Obiozor, said no generation of Nigerian leaders since independence had been able to create an atmosphere of credibility.

He said, “Recently, some Nigerian political leaders have said that Nigerian unity is non-negotiable. This is an irony because these leaders seem to have forgotten Nigerian history or have failed to learn the lessons of history in general.

“Nigerian unity is definitely negotiable and must be re-negotiated for it to stand or survive the test of time. The reality over the years remains that in spite of the best efforts of all our leaders past or present, Nigerian unity is not guaranteed.

“It is simply, at best, an aspiration and not yet an achievement. Consequently, the statement that Nigerian unity is ‘non-negotiable’ is simply a historical fallacy.”