The Northern Progressives Youth Initiative has reacted angrily to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s pronouncement that the South-East region should produce the country’s president in 2019.
The group in a statement signed by its Secretary-General, Mallam Gazali Abdullahi said that the comment was unbecoming of Obasanjo and condemnable.
The statement noted that “while President Muhammadu Buhari is on vacation and with so much fuss over the President’s decision to undergo medical examinations during his vacation, it is confounding to find an elder in the status of a former president needlessly criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country and discussing a successor to a sitting president.
“In his days as a sitting president, everyone knows that such a crass remark would have passed as a felony by Obasanjo’s own standards. And, for someone who had publicly claimed to have retired from politics, one wonders on what auspices Obasanjo thinks he can unilaterally determine which region produces the president for a country of almost 180 million people, or if integrity has any interpretation in Obasanjo’s dictionary.”
The statement pointed out that judging by his conduct after his exit from the presidency, Obasanjo had clearly shown that he is not to be a friend of the North.
“In the trying times of late former President Umaru Yar’Adua, it was the same Obasanjo who said all manner of unprintable things against the late president even when he was battling for his life on his hospital bed.
“This time again, Obasanjo has shown his hands that he is neither a friend of President Buhari nor is he a friend of the North. But as far as 2019 is concerned, we want to make it equivocally clear that only God, through the ballot of majority of Nigerians, and not one man can decide who the president of Nigeria will be in 2019,” the statement said.
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