North Is Interested In 2023, We’ll Engage Presidential Candidates — Arewa Consultative Forum

The north is very interested in the 2023 presidential election and would not leave it to chance, Murtala Aliyu, the Secretary-General of the Arewa Consultative Forum, has told THE WHISTLER.

The former minister, who spoke in an exclusive interview, said the ACF has discussed the issue “severally,” adding that it is however not bothered about where President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor would come from.

He said the political parties would decide who they want to fly their presidential flag, but the north is prepared to engage all the candidates on what they plan for the region.

He said, “The issue of 2023, we have discussed that severally, I think the ACF actually doesn’t concern itself with where the President comes from. What is important is somebody who will come around the country as a Nigerian, not a sectional person and we leave that to the president and to the political parties.

“Now, when any political party chooses a candidate we will now engage the candidate and see what he has in stock for the country and especially for the northern part of the country. So it’s not to start going round to say the president must come from ABC and so on, but I think what we need in the country is a Nigerian president, and at the end of the day, whoever it is, whether it’s from the north or south we will engage the person in the appropriate manner.

“All these issues about where the President comes from has not solved any problem so far. I think we should learn from history.”

Aliyu also expressed frustration that the ACF has been unable to meet President Buhari since he started his second term in office, due largely to his busy schedule.

He said the ACF has to find other means of passing its suggestions on how to improve the state of the nation to the president, adding the organization does that through the media.

“If we don’t have the ability to see the President, there’s a way to reach out to him through the media. And I think that his aides analyze reports to him, and tell him that ACF suggests this and that so I am confident that even without necessarily seeing him physically one-on-one, we can pass our ideas to him,” he said.

Aliyu added that the ACF is a Non-Governmental Organization that can only brainstorm and give advice to governments at all levels.