A group called Concerned Arewa Patriots (CAP) has called on Northerners to unite and “chase Him (Jonathan) out of the villa through elections.”
Mallam Maiyaki Idris, the leader of the CAP group said they were focused on identifying a suitable Northern candidate to challenge Jonathan at the polls during the 2015 elections. The group also believes Jonathan is determined to run on the PDP ticket at the 2015 elections. They believe that setting out early to locate the best contender is how to win against the incumbent.
Idris stated, “Be able to appreciate the path that leads to our goals of unity and sustainable development, we have set out machinery on course to fish out the very best of our own, to seek for and pursue the prime position of Presidency come 2015, to broker the peace and security of the nation, which has been in crisis for some time now.
“We make this humble appeal as an initiative for allagencies of the North to begin to consider, in order to generate our total cooperation and support for our consensus candidate come 2015,” he said.
“My own religion believes that power belongs to Almighty Allah and Allah gives it to whosoever He wishes and He can take it at any moment. God will still give power to who He wants, but God helps those who help themselves. What we are saying here now is that we should help ourselves… that somebody is an incumbent does not mean that automatically he has won the Presidency and that is what we are talking about.
“There must be election and rigging cannot succeed without our cooperation. We are the ones they give money to go and then they rig and get away.
“But if we say this time around we are not taking it, it has to be an election and if that level of awareness is created in the North, believe me we will win that election with the backing of Almighty Allah, because God created all of us and He has blessed us and not one particular individual.
“So, the issue of conceding to somebody is a weakness and it demoralizes people.”
He added: “2015 is precious to us and we are seeing what is actually against us… It is a bitter lesson for us to accept what we are doing now.
“North ought to hold political power, but the North now is nothing in Nigeria. The economic power is the West, whether you like it or not. Take the statistics of the banks in this country, the financial houses, the corporate organizations; tell me who manages and who owns them.
“The commercial activities in this country are in the East. In my own local village, we have energetic boys, but even if it is anything, it is from the Igboman that I get it.
“We Northerners have come to a stage where we should sit down and reason and work as one, irrespective of religion or tribe.”