2023 Presidency: ‘Stop Threatening North With IPOB’ – Arewa Secretary-General

The Secretary-General of the Arewa Consultative Forum, Mr. Anthony Sani, has warned that using the Indigenous People of Biafra to threaten the North over the 2023 presidency will not help the cause of the Igbo to produce the President when the time comes.

Referring to a statement credited to a former Governor of Anambra State, Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife, in an interview with a national newspaper where the elder statesman noted that Igbo people might embrace IPOB if denied the presidency in 2023, the ACF scribe argued that using IPOB to blackmail the region was unfair.

According to Sani, in an interview with Sunday PUNCH, democracy is a contest of ideas and reasons and not a matter of threats and intimidation.

He said, “I have said democracy is a contest of ideas and reasons, and not by threats and intimidation that have no place in multiparty democracy.

The presidency is secured in multiparty democracy through persuasions that seek to break barriers and build bridges. It is not obtained through affirmative action.

“I do not believe Ezeife could say what was reported. This is because he is too intelligent not to know that Nigeria practices multiparty democracy which allows political parties to present their candidates from any zone as part of their winning game plans.

“Ezeife also knows that there is no national consensus on rotation, power shift or zoning that is binding on political parties. That may explain why President Muhammadu Buhari contested with President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003 despite the deliberate concession of the presidency to the South-West because of Chief (M.K.O.) Abiola. That is also why former President Goodluck Jonathan contested with Buhari in 2011 and 2015.

“If ex-President Jonathan had won in 2015, the South would have held sway for over 16 years in the nascent democracy. You may also note that in 2019, presidential candidates emerged from both the North and the South. What is more, democracy is a contest of ideas and reasons and not a matter of threat and intimidation.

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