President Muhammadu Buhari has reportedly agreed that power should return to the Southern protectorate at the completion of his second term in 2023.
The chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) Professor Itse Sagay, made this known in an interview with Sun Newspapers.
Mr Sagay stated this while reacting to the resolution of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) led by Professor Ango Abdullahi, that the Northern protectorate will retain power at the expiration of the president’s tenure.
The NEF is not the only group clamouring for power to remain in the North, Arewa Youths Consultative Forum (AYCF) has advised political parties to ensure they field candidates of Northern extraction in the next presidential election or regret not doing so after the 2023 exercise.
The governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-rufai, appears to be in opposition to the decision of the NEF and the AYCF, fuelling speculations of him nursing the political ambition to succeed vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, in office.
The PACAC chairman in his reaction said the decision of the North to retain power is dangerous and this may cause uncontrollable chaos in the country if the gentleman agreement of rotating power between North and South is breached.
“This is their mentality, and this group of elders is there in the North, and they are arrogant and totally cocooned in their self worship of their power and authority and so on,” Mr Sagay said.
“They don’t care what happens to this country. It is a very dangerous proposition to say that presidency will not come to the South after eight years of it being in the North.
“This country has always had this North-South problem; we call it the national question, which has so many aspects. This is one of them. There is already a gentle man’s agreement that for now, there should be rotation between North and South. In fact, it was the North that was vehement about that when Obasanjo was in power and that has now been instituted by practice, and if any man tries to break it now, it can have consequences that could be uncontrollable.
“I don’t want these Northern elders to think that they are so powerful that others will just stay pensive and submissive and they will now break this understanding for harmonious relationship of peoples of this country. Luckily, as far as I know they don’t have support in the population. My impression of them is that they are isolated and in their arrogance they have cut themselves off from the population.
“As long as the real leaders, people that are winning elections like El-Rufai, President Buhari, stick to that agreement, there is nothing the so called Northern elders can make any difference to what the country has accepted,” he added.
