By Umar Salam.
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNGs) have declared support for the rotation of Nigeria’s Presidency to the Southern part of the country, ahead of the 2023 presidential poll.
According to the leader of the CNGs, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, the North will be better off with a Southern president who would provide services to everybody, as President Muhammadu Buhari was of no benefit to the larger population of Northerners.
Suleiman argued that while Northerners have held power for most of Nigeria’s existence, the region was still backward unlike the South which is more developed despite its nominal ascension to power.
The CNGs leader, while responding to questions from The Sun, added that if having a president from an area was a yardstick for development, then the North would have been the most developed region in the country.
“What needs to be done by the North is not to insist that power must remain in the region which in any case, does not even serve the interest of the larger population of northerners.
“What is happening to us in the North now, are we happy that we have a Northerner as a president? We are not getting anything. So, the North will be better off with a Southern president who would provide services to everybody. It is the elite who have not allowed us to think Nigeria by making us think in terms of ethnicity and religion so that they can control us.
“What is the point of having an Igbo president when you do not have anything in the South East? What is the point of having a Northern president when all these killings are going on in the North? It is even bad for us now because when we talk, they will say we are fighting our brother but if it is a Southerner, we can talk and shout.
“In 2014, I cited an example and people agreed with me that if having a president from an area is the yardstick for development, then the North would have been the most developed.
“This is because the Northerners have held power for most of Nigeria’s existence. Why are we the most backward then? The South East has just held power just nominally during the First Republic but why then are they the most developed?
“So, all this noise about where the president comes from is just an elitist way of manipulating our thinking. Don’t we have governors from our localities? What are they doing for us? We even have local government chairmen. Are they working for us?” Suleiman queried.