KADUNA State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has said that Southern Nigerian people will have to negotiate and dialogue with the ‘northern politicians’ if they want to realise the dream of producing the country’s next president in 2023.
He said this while addressing newsmen in Kaduna on Monday.
El-Rufai, who had in several fora called for a southerner to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari, noted that it was foolish for anyone to think that the North must give power to the South in 2023.
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The governor stated that the North would not allow itself to be dictated to by anyone from any part of the country to relinquish power to the South.
“It can be done but you have to come and sit with the politicians in the North and dialogue and then we agree to give our support to the South, but no one has the right to sit in Lagos or Port Harcourt and say whether northerners want it or not, they must relinquish power to the South, that is wrong,” he said.
“It is not how we do politics and in fact, it is foolish.”
“We are not saying there cannot be a rotational presidency,” he added.
El-Rufai’s comments are coming on the heels of a meeting by the Northern Governors Forum (NGF) on Monday, where the South was berated for insisting that it must produce the country’s next president.
The NGF described the calls of its southern counterpart as unconstitutional.
The governors stated that the 1999 Nigerian Constitution only made provisions for the candidate with the majority of votes to occupy the position of the nation’s president.
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