2023: APC must zone its presidential ticket to South, Akeredolu replies Adamu

 

Obiora Ifoh, Abuja

Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, has sent a strong-worded message to the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC), asking that the party should declare its position on zoning its 2023 presidential candidate.

 

According to Akeredolu, the next president must come from the southern part of the country.

 

This, the governor said, was the reason why the party zoned its national chairmanship position to the north.

 

He condemned the refusal of the leadership of the APC to announce to aspirants that the presidential slot would be for the south in 2023, stressing that “it will be disingenuous for anyone to argue against rotation at this period.”

 

Akeredolu argued that while adhering to the spirit and letters of the laws guiding the conduct of elections and succession to political offices, political expediency dictates that “we must do nothing which is capable of tilting the delicate balance against the established arrangement which guarantees peace and promotes trust.”

 

The governor recalled that the leadership of the party adopted the principle of rotational representation during the just-concluded convention.

 

In a statement on Tuesday, Akeredolu maintained that “this is the time the leaders of the party must make a categorical statement, devoid of equivocation, on the pattern of succession.”

 

Akeredolu expected the APC to limit the propensities for disagreement to a region for possible micro-management, stating the need to avoid self-inflicted crises before the general election.

 

 

Without mincing words, the Ondo helmsman posited that “It is the turn of the Southern part of the country to produce the next President.”

 

He stressed that the APC leadership should not have any difficulty in making that pronouncement, just the same way it fixed various fees for the purchase of forms.

 

He added the statement on the zoning of the presidential ticket to the south must be done without delay, maintaining that the principle of Federal Character is enshrined in the 1999 Constitution.

 

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Labour Party has tasked Nigerians to unite and work together for the purpose of ending bad leadership which All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party have inflicted on the nation.

 

National Chairman of Labour Party,  Barrister Julius Abure also said that 2023 polls is a unique opportunity for Nigerians to redefine political and electoral fitness of every politicians who is aspiring to offices.

 

In a statement yesterday in Abuja on the occasion Ramadan celebration  LP chairman said, “Patriotic Nigerians must unite and work together to send the economic saboteurs and the looting political thieves who wickedly deconstruct and strangulate our national growth and development. To uninstall the Political hyenas in both APC and PDP in 2023 is a task that must done.

 

“Salah Celebration is a great occasion and opportunity for us most especially as Nigerians who have been exposed to several political abuses to a point that makes one to begin to daily reflect on our personal and our collective pains we acquired through bad Governance.

 

“This Sallah Celebration is a very unique opportunity for us all to begin to consider and evaluate means and ways to confront the prevaling sufferings from the misrule of both APC and PDP governments since the inception of this present dispensation.

 

“We in Labour Party are very concerned and disturbed by the level of corrupt practices that are being perfected under the government of the day with a highly compromised and inept National Assembly doing absolutely nothing to check the drift.

 

“It is our patriotic duty to act as one body of true Nigerians to firmly engage, confront and decisively defeat the APC/ PDP Political Merchants in Government at the 2023 polls.

 

“At this point there is no better political alternative for us as Nigerians other than the only appropriate, strong, reliable, re – juvenated and highly morally fit political choice, the Labour Party, that is the widely reckoned as the most potent, competent alternate force organised to rescue this nation.

 

“We should be ready to reject and defeat those who trouble the wellbeing of Nigerians in both the APC and PDP come 2023 polls while we work very hard enough as a team to install LABOUR PARTY into postions come 2023.

 

“We leave you with the statistics presented here – under to ignite in your individual consciences the extreme level of incompetence that has been the lots of Nigerians as Governance: In Kano State, the salaries of Civil Servants were cut; In Kogi State the workers salaries are paid in installments; Same story as in Kogi is the reality in Niger State; Up to this moment in Gombe State the minimum wage is not yet paid; In Ondo State, three months salaries are owed the State Workers; In spite of all the above, the men in the government leadership paid as much as N100m for nomination forms. All these States are mostly APC States and in coalition with the PDP.”

 

Barr Abure however said the above are just insignificant part of the total incompetence that go into governance but promised that all these will be rectified under a Labour Party government.

 

Former Kaduna lawmaker, Shehu Sani has revealed the only way the Southern region of Nigeria can produce President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor in 2023.

 

Ahead of the 2023 Presidential election, several groups and well-meaning individuals have been clamouring for the South East to produce Nigeria’s next President.

 

However, the All Progressives congress, APC, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, are still undecided on where to zone the presidential ticket.

 

Sani, on Tuesday, said the only way a Southern President can emerge in 2023 is if the major political parties produced their presidential candidates from the region.

 

His tweet read: “Power will shift to the South only if the candidates of the two main political parties are picked from the South.”

 

Meanwhile, the leaders of the regional socio-cultural groups, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Afenifere, and PANDEF, had accused APC of playing hanky-panky with the zoning of 2023 presidency to the South.

 

The groups insisted that the Presidency must return to the Southern part of the country.

 

However, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) led by Prof. Ango Abdullahi, frowned at zoning of presidency, demanding that all major political parties should throw their tickets open to all sections of the country,

 

According to them, “power shift arrangement is already dead and buried.”

 

In another development, Former governor of Ogun State, Aremo Olusegun Osoba, former governor of Osun State, Chief Bisi Akande, and others will, on Friday, meet presidential aspirants on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the South-West.

Venue is the Flag House, Marina, Lagos.

Osoba, who is in Paris, France, confirmed the meeting, saying “it is being organised to ensure there is peace in Yorubaland”.

Aspirants expected include Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State and Senator Ibikunle Amosun.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila will lead some federal lawmakers from the South-West to the meeting.

South-West APC Governors will also attend the meeting.