2023: El-Rufai Slams ‘Foolish’ Demand For Power-Shift To South

Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has described as “foolish”, the demands for the presidency to shift to the South in 2023.

The governor’s statement came after the Northern Governors Forum unanimously condemned the demand by their southern counterpart for the presidency to shift to the South in 2023.

They had claimed that the demand contradicts the provision of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution which states that, “President shall: – score the majority votes; score at least 25% of the votes cast in 2/3 States of the Federation” and “In the case of run-up, simple majority wins the election.”

Governor El-Rufai, who hosted the northern governors to a meeting on Monday in Kaduna, issued a follow up statement condemning the southern governors’ demand.

“We are not saying there cannot be rotational presidency,” Daily Trust quoted El-Rufai to have told journalists in Kaduna, adding that “it can be done but you have to come and sit with the politicians in the north and dialogue and then we agree to give our support to the south but no one has the right to sit in Lagos or Port Harcourt and say whether northerners want it or not, they must relinquish power to the south, that is wrong, it is not how we do politics and in fact, it is foolish.”

THE WHISTLER recalls that at the end of their meeting held on July 5, 2021 at the Lagos State Government House, governors of the 17 southern states had issued a communique in which they called for the presidency to be zoned to southern Nigeria in 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,” they had said.