Afenifere leader Chief Adebanjo reiterates that it would be unfair to deny Ndigbo the presidency

AFENIFERE leader Chief Ayo Adebanjo has reiterated his stance that the pan-Yoruba organisation cannot support Asiwaju Bola Tinubu or Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in next year's presidential elections as it would be unfair to do so.

Although not constitutional, Nigeria's component parts have a gentleman's agreement that the presidency will rotate between the north and the south of the country. President Muhammadu Buhari's tenure will end in 2023 and being a Fulani northern Muslim, it is expected that the next president will come from southern Nigeria.

Since the return to democracy in 1999, the southwest has produced President Olusegun Obasanjo and the south-south President Goodluck Jonathan, so come 2023, the presidency should automatically go to the southeast. Over recent years, pan-Igbo cultural body Ohaneze Ndigbo warned the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to both zone their presidential tickets to the south.

However, after the recent primaries, the APC ended up zoning its presidential candidate to Asiwaju Tinubu from the southwest, while the PDP made Alhaji Abubakar from the northeast its flagbearer. Chief Adebanjo, however, said that in the interest of fairness, Afenifere will be supporting Peter Obi of the Labour Party.

According to Chief Adebanjo, the group stood on justice and fairness and believed in true federalism and the federal character principle. He added that Afenifere was backing the former Anambra State governor because it was the turn of the southeast to produce Nigeria's president.

Chief Adebanjo said: “Not a few Yoruba leaders questioned why I should be supporting Peter Obi, a candidate of Igbo extraction, against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a Yoruba. I took my time to explain that the presidency is not a contest between the Yorubas and the Igbos and to a large extent I was able to convince many.

“But ever since, social media has been filled with comments tending to ethnicise the campaign instead of making it issue-based. Afenifere has, therefore, decided to address you today and through you educate the public on the ideological and equitable principles which have influenced our decision.

"Afenifere is the Yoruba interpretation of the social welfarist ideology of Action Group, a political party founded by Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his colleagues in 1951 with strong advocacy for federalism as the best form of government to give the federating units the requisite autonomy to thrive and peacefully compete among themselves for the ultimate development of Nigeria. Our founding fathers Sir Ahmadu Bello, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo agreed to the system with the endorsement of colonial secretary Sir Oliver Littleton in 1954 and embodied it in the 1960 independence constitution."

He added that this is the modest contribution of Afenifere in shaping Nigeria into a federation where no person or ethnic nationality is oppressed. Chief Adebanjo said Afenifere and the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum unanimously proposed that the minimum condition for a peaceful transition from the disastrous eight years of Buhari’s government headed by a president of northern extraction was to have the next president from the south.

Chief Adebanjo added: “In this quest for peace, based on equity and inclusiveness, the Yoruba took the first turn at the zoning arrangement in 1999 and that led to the emergence of Chief Obasanjo. The current vice president is a Yoruba man and equity forbids us for presuming to support another Yoruba person for the presidency in 2023.

“The current president is a Fulani from the northwest and by virtue of the zoning arrangement that has governed Nigeria since 1999, power is supposed to return to the south imminently. The southwest, as I have pointed out, has produced a president and currently sits as vice president,  the south-south has spent a total of six years in the presidency but the Igbo people of the southeast have never tasted presidency in Nigeria and now that the power is due back in the south, equity demands that it be ceded to the Igbo.

“We cannot continue to demand that the Igbo people remain in Nigeria, while we at the same time continue to brutally marginalise and exclude them from the power dynamics. We will not compromise this principle of justice, equity and inclusiveness because one of our own Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is a frontline candidate.”

According to Chief Adebanjo, Afenifere had no apologies but due courage of the conviction that Nigeria can only prosper in righteousness. He reiterated that to keep Nigeria one, everyone should be Obi/Datti compliant and he advocated that this should be the slogan henceforth.