As the 2023 presidential election draws nearer, former Presidential aide, Doyin Okupe, has said that anyone who love fairness, equity, and our national unity will not support a northern presidential candidate.
Okupe said this in a statement released on Tuesday, August 17. While cautioning the PDP against fielding a Northern candidate for 2023, Okupe noted that the North has the numbers to win Presidency at will, but political concessions are what has always been employed in Nigeria at moments of potential national schism.
The statement in part reads
”We of the PDP Southern Presidency Advocacy Group, hereby wish to humbly counsel the leadership of the party and its stakeholders to do everything to zone the Presidency to the south. This desire is in consonance with the publicly expressed position of our political heads, the Southern Governors Forum and the yearning and aspiration of a majority of Nigerian citizens who hail from the southern part of Nigeria.
The arguement of the proponents of a northern Presidential candidate for the pdp in 2023 on the surface seems unassailable. Especially against the assumption that our rival APC may choose a southern presidential candidate.
However when this arguement is viewed alongside the current sociopolitical situation in the country, it falls flat completely.
Any group of persons who love fairness, equity and our national unity will not support a northern candidate for now.
For a fact, the North has the numbers to win Presidency at will, but political concessions is what we have always employed in Nigeria at moments of potential national schism.
We did this after MKO Abiola’s death and repeated the same concessionary considerations through the ingenious doctrine of necessity that saw to it that President Goodluck Jonathan peacefully succeeded President Yaradua after the latter’s unfortunate demise.
We solemnly pray that wisdom and the national interest, hope for peaceful coexistence and our unity will prevail over crass political opportinism and overriding self interest in these trying times.”
