Northern Elders Forum (NEF) has said it would not be forced by Southern governors to relinquish power to the South come 2023, saying the contest for the presidency is open to all regions.
It said it was wrong for the Southern governors to assume that it could exclude the North from the discussion on a matter that is purely democratic.
NEF’s Director of Publicity, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed said the South alone cannot decide where the next president of the country should come from.
It said: “We are running a democratic government and decisions over where the next president comes from will be made by voters exercising their rights to choose which candidate best serves their interest.”
Also, the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), said the Southern governors’ position on where the president should come from amounted to forcing an undemocratic process on the North.
The statement by CNG spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman reads: “The Southern governors’ resolutions in that regard have further exposed a deliberate attempt to impose a contentious system of a rotational presidency that turns all democratic norms and accepted indices of our national demography on their heads; a rotation system that is clearly aimed at achieving dubious political goals; and one clearly designed to weaken the North.
“The Southern governors’ threat to impose and enforce this undemocratic leadership selection process on the North, irrespective of its advantage of numerical superiority and inherent political sophistry, is part of a calculated design to continuously weaken our region politically and pauperise it economically.
“This conspiracy is actively perpetrated with the connivance of some northerners and accommodated by the personal ambition of a few of those that present themselves as northern political leaders.
‘We warn the Southern governors and their northern collaborators that any attempt to ride on the back of such gratuitous insults to democratic fair play and crass political opportunism, to hoist incompetent leadership on the nation in the name of rotation would not be accepted and shall be vehemently resisted.”
