The Governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, says he has nothing against Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi winning the 2023 presidency.
Akeredolu said this in an interview with Channels Television on Wednesday.
The Ondo governor is a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), which has Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as its presidential candidate.
However, he has consistently maintained that power should shift to the South in 2023, at the expiration of the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari, who is from the North.
Tinubu and Obi are both Southerners.
Reacting to a question on whether he would have supported a Muslim-Muslim ticket if he was in the opposition, he said religion should not be an important factor in the 2023 election.
“I would have said the same thing. If you had listened to my lecture today, I was very clear. I said that religion is not the issue now.
“We have other issues that should be on the front burner today in this country — issue of restructuring, issue of rotational presidency, among others.
“I said, ‘look, since 1999, there is an understanding that we will move from north to south — rotate the presidency’. And if today, we have people who want to deploy what I call manipulation of our people on religious basis to think that they can change this (call for southern presidency), then we should not accept it.
“For me, it is not because of asiwaju Bola Tinubu. If you listened to my lecture, I said if Obi is elected as president, for me, that will be all right. If Bola Tinubu is elected, that will be all right. For me, it must come to the south; that is the position,” Akeredolu said.