Governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu’s comment that any political party that fields a northern candidate in the 2023 presidential election will lose has pitched him against the Northern Elders Forum (NEF).
NEF’s spokesman, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed said every eligible northerner has the right to vie for the nation’s highest office in 2023.
He said the north refused to be harassed or intimidated into yielding the presidency to other regions, noting that Akeredolu’s comment could exacerbate the nation’s divisions.
Baba-Ahmed decried that “some sections of this country think that intimidating and threatening the North is what will yield the presidency to them, but they are wrong, it will not.”
The NEF spokesman added that the comments made by the likes of Governor Akeredolu were not helpful but would raise the temperature of the country, stressing that it would not help any Southern politician to get the support of the north even if the person was a good material.
According to him, what is missing in Nigeria presently was an elite consensus of what it takes to get the country to survive between now and 2023 elections.