from OKORO CHINEDU in Lagos, Nigeria
Nigeria Bureau
LAGOS, (CAJ Information) – ETHNIC variations are intensifying forward of common elections scheduled for Nigeria subsequent month.
This after former president, Olusegun Obasanjo (85), apparently endorsed Labour Get together candidate, Peter Obi (61), forward of his (Obasanjo’s) personal occasion.
That’s an unprecedented growth in Nigeria’s tense political terrain. Obasanjo, the primary president because the introduction of democracy in 1999, is a member of the Peoples Democratic Get together (PDP), now an opposition.
PDP misplaced energy to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015, led by present president, Muhammadu Buhari (80), who’s ineligible for the upcoming polls due to time period limits.
The Presidency has angrily reacted after Obasanjo was quoted as saying Nigeria was “hell” below Buhari.
Senior Presidential Particular Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, acknowledged, “As we mentioned typically again, Mr Obasanjo’s tenure between 1999-2007, represented the darkish days of Nigeria’s democracy, because of a slew of assaults on the structure.”
The pan-Igbo sociopolitical strain organisation, the South East Revival Group (SERG), mentioned quite the opposite, the endorsement of Obi by Obasanjo is “a welcome growth.”
In flip, the group has urged the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (76), and the APC’S Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu (70) to stop the race and step down for “the folks’s alternative.”
“Within the first place, lengthy earlier than the presidential major elections, all lovers of fairness, equity and justice suggested Nigerian political events to zone their 2023 presidential tickets to the South East,” mentioned President and Nationwide Coordinator of the SERG, Willy Ezugwu.
The argument that the following president of Africa’s greatest nation by economic system and inhabitants (over 200 million folks) ought to emerge from the South buoys SERG’s place.
Buhari is from the North, which is predominantly Muslim.
Ex-vice president, Abubakar, can be a Northerner and former Lagos mayor, Tinubu, is the predominantly Christian South.
An unwritten regulation is that the presidency should rotate between the areas. PDP’s Goodluck Jonathan was the final president from the south, from 2010-15. He had succeeded Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who died in workplace.
SERG has quoted late governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Abulkadir Balarabe Musa, as beforehand proposing that “for the sake of peace, justice and nationwide unity”, the presidency ought to go to the South East area.
The Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, additionally known as for a Nigerian of South East extraction to steer the nation come 2023.
Ayo Adebanjo, the Afenifere chief and elder statesman, mentioned based mostly on “morality” the South East area ought to produce the following president “within the spirit of equity and unity.”
“These Nigerian elders and statesmen, who’ve seen all of it, can’t be fallacious of their unanimous calls,” Ezugwu argued.
SERG believes Obi and working mate Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed are “youthful and haven’t any baggage of corruption.”
Obi, the previous governor of Anambra, stop the factionalised PDP in 2022.
“The general public endorsement of the joint-ticket by former President Obasanjo has given the nation path and a hope for nationwide restoration after years of maladministration and mismanagement of Nigeria’s pure endorsements,” Ezugwu mentioned.
One other former PDP governor, Northerner Rabiu Kwankwaso (57), will lead his New Nigeria Folks’s Get together (NNPP) into the watershed polls.
The West African nation, the largest crude oil producer within the continent, is split roughly in half between Muslims and Christians.
Violence has marred preparations for the upcoming polls.
– CAJ Information
