Southern Govs agitation for Presidency will pitch North against South – Group

By Musa Baba Adamu

A group, Northern Youth Leaders Forum (NYLF) has said the agitation for Nigeria’s Presidency to shift to the Southern part of the country in 2023 is an agenda to serve the selfish interest of a few people.
The Forum yesterday told newsmen during a press briefing in the Adamawa State capital, Yola, that if the southern governors pushing for the presidency were sincere, they should have specifically spoken for the Southeast and possibly Northeast which have never produced the President.
National President of the NYLF, Eliot Afiyo, who read the text of the briefing at the NUJ Press Centre in Yola, said, “We view the Lagos declaration by the Southern governors demanding for a southern president in 2023 as a deliberate and intentional scheming to project the political interest of some few individuals against the collective national interest.
“The implication of this declaration tends to tell the northerners that the 2023 presidential election would be based on North versus South instead of the political parties.”
Eliot said the Southern governors’ position was provocative and insensitive, adding that it is “a political war which must be given thorough and intelligent consideration.”
He said no matter how important the 2023 Presidency is to the South, the governors’ declaration is ill-timed and ill-advised.
“If at all the Southern governors desired the presidency indeed, they should have summoned the courage to specify the geopolitical zone,” Eliot said.
The Northern Youth Leaders Forum which said at the Thursday press briefing that it had spent the last six days in a consultative tour of the Northeast, urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to sustain its electronic transmission of results which it introduced in the Ondo and Edo elections because it gives credibility to the electoral process and eliminates ballot box snatching and falsification of results.
The Forum, conversely, cautioned INEC against the conduct of electronic voting.
“Electronic voting, no matter how good or necessary it seems to be, should not be introduced for now because of the low literacy level in the country, especially in the North,” Comrade Eliot Afiyo said.