THE General Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church Tunde Bakare has said that with the current structure of Nigeria, no one can become Nigeria’s next president without negotiation with the northern part of the country.
Bakare, who stated this during an interview with ThisDay on Monday, also expressed doubts that the North would willingly give up power in 2023.
He said the country was structured in such a way that no part of the country could win an election without negotiating with each other.
The exception to negotiating with the region, the cleric said, was a rejig of the 1999 Constitution which he referred to as ‘Nigerians death certificate.’
“Anyone that wants to lead this country right now will have to negotiate with the North and the North has a way of giving you the crown and holding the sceptre and if that’s going to change, our glorified death certificate called the Nigerian constitution must have to go through a rejig,” he said.
“Nigeria is structured in such a way that no section can win an election by itself. The southerner cannot win an election without reaching out to the North and the northerner cannot win the election without reaching out to the South.”
The cleric noted that the North had nothing going for it like in the First Republic when it had the textiles working, hence the need to hold onto power.
“I, honestly, will say that almost all the things that were going for the North in the days of Ahmadu Bello are no longer there. The textile industries where they dominated are not there anymore. The groundnut pyramids, among others. And what they have is what they hold. They have power.”
The cleric’s comments were in tandem with Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s, who had earlier said the southern Nigerian people would have to negotiate and dialogue with the ‘northern politicians’ if they wanted to realise the dream of producing the country’s next president in 2023.
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.
The governor, who was reacting to insistent calls by the Southern Governors Forum and socio-political leaders from the South that the region must be allowed to produce the next Nigeria’s president, said that the North would not allow itself to be dictated to by anyone from any part of the country to relinquish power.
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