Former secretary general of the Pan Yoruba Socio Cultural Group, Afenifere, Senator Femi Okunrounmu yesterday, gave more insight into why the group insisted on Nigeria having a president of the South East extraction come year 2023.
Okunrounmu, who was the chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the 2014 National Conference disclosed that his group’s insistence that power returns to the South and particularly, the South East was part of some of the recommendations highlighted in the year 2014 CONFAB reports which also expressly stated that issue of Federal Character and Power Rotation is of paramount importance.
In the statement entitled: “The Imperative of Nigerian President from South East Extraction”, the Afenifere stalwart in a statement issued on Thursday in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital explained that his group’s support for an Igbo personality as the next president is “a clarion call to equity, inclusiveness and respect for the abiding covenant of our national engagement.
He further disclosed that Afenifere’s position on the 2023 presidential election was informed by the fact that other parts of Southern Nigeria had taken their shots at the presidency.
“The Government of Goodluck Jonathan constituted the 2014 National Conference in which I had the privilege of being appointed as Chairman of its Presidential Advisory Committee and a delegate.
“The resolutions at the 2014 CONFAB have since become the new testament to our national political engagement.
One of the fundamental gains from the Conference which derived from earlier conferences under Abacha and Obasanjo, was the rotation of the office of the President between the North and South and amongst the constituent six geo-political zones.
“While the military imposed 1999 Constitution, has made itself not amenable in its fundamental essence, the rotational principle has become the binding convention which can only be breached at the health of the federation.”
On the rotational presidency, Okunrounmu specifically, said the South West and South-South had taken their turns through Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, respectively.
“Thus those who delinquently run their mouths against Ayo Adebanjo, Leader of Afenifere for expressing in the strongest terms that the denial of the South East its legitimate turn may sound the death knell of the federation are only being hypocritical or in the uneasy foreboding of losing unmerited privileges in the Nigeria contraption.
“Let it be said that no argument of democracy based on the flawed Nigerian demographic statistics will make a Northerner succeeding Buhari see the light of the day nor will an enactment of Fulani/Yoruba rotation of power through the 2023 election peacefully come to pass.
‘’Those who gleefully share the nation’s resources on the basis of federal character cannot hypocritically seek to jettison the principle in the access to the Presidency of Nigeria without dire consequences for its continued corporate existence.
“The endorsement of a Nigerian president of South East origin and Peter Obi’s candidacy by well -meaning groups and leaders across the federation is premised on the understanding that there lies the path to justice, peace and survival of the federation. It is a task that must be done”.
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