Senator Shehu Sani has lambasted those thinking of North holding on to power beyond 2023, saying that North would be ungrateful if it fails to relinquish power to South after President Muhammadu Buhari’s term.
The Senator, who represented Kaduna Central in the 8th National Assembly, while reacting to Governor Nasir el-Rufai’s recent call for abolition of power rotation saying the arrangements is a barrier to political equality and needed to be de-emphasised and abandoned in favour of competence, said it would be unfair after eight years for North to hold tight to power.
Speaking when he paid a Sallah homage to the governor of old Kaduna state, Alhaji AbdulKadir Balarabe Musa on Monday, Senator Sani said Southerners supported President Muhammadu Buhari to emerge as president in 2015 and it behoves on Northerners to repay the support come 2023.
According to Sani, “it is an act of ingratitude for any Northerner to think that by 2023, he or she should aspire for office in the view of the fact that, Southerners, particularly the Southwest did everything possible to support the Northern candidate to emerge as the president in 2015. It will amount to changing the rules of the game at half time, when you are leading two zero.
“The North should appreciate the support of progressive minded nationalists from the Southwest or Southern part of Nigeria who had worked tirelessly to remove the PDP from power in 2015. We have not forgotten that President Buhari had contested three times without becoming president and on the fourth time, with the support of people from the South, he emerged the President of the country.
“It would be unfair after eight years, for North to think of continuing to hold the grip and levers of power in Nigeria. Another point is that, in an idle society where ethnicity, religion and other interests play no role, we can think of that in the farther future, but where all these issues continue, in a political scheme of Nigeria, we can’t shy away from them.
“It will be a serious threat to unity and peace of our country if one part of the country will continue to dominate the political sphere of the country due to its demographic majority and land size. I’m a socialist and I believe that the one who should preside over the affairs of the country should be competent, but is it competence that brought the ruling party to power in 2015?
“I think we should be very frank to ourselves and it will also be good for the President that he should rein in people in his party and caution them against dropping such kind of discourse while at its infant stage now, before it overheats the polity. After President Buhari, power needs to rotate to some of these major geopolitical zones.
“Southwest has helped us to be where we are today. You can’t talk of competency when you have not produced an Igbo president. Are they not Nigerians? You cannot continue to punish them for the offense which they are not architect of?
“And for the North, it is important for the President to set a policy agenda in the next four years to address the socio economic and security problems facing the Northern part of Nigeria. The President must invest in the North in agriculture, education, infrastructure for us to prepare for a restructured Nigeria. Northern governors must complement that.
“It will be unfair that after federal character is applied in employment, education and political appointment and even on the way the ruling party zones it’s offices in the National Assembly, for you now to think of exclusive advantage of dominating the political sphere.
“Right now the North must put his house in order and let us address the issue of majority and minority which has never existed in this scale in history of Nigeria. We must look towards energy and resource independence. The idea of waiting for federal allocation which comes from Abuja does not help us as people who have been before oil, standing on our own feet,” he said.
