Presidency of 2023: you cannot force northerners to vote for president of the south – Baba-Ahmed tells governors of the south

Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, the national publicity secretary of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), told southern governors that northerners cannot be forced to vote for a southern president in the 2023 general election.

Baba-Ahmed said that while there is nothing wrong with having a southerner as President of Nigeria in 2023, those running for office after President Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year tenure should work hard to persuade locals of the North and other Nigerians to vote for them.

DAILY POST reported earlier this month that the governors of the southern states had jointly agreed that his region should produce the next president.

“We don’t want another tribal or regional president,” Baba-Ahmed told The Nation, reacting to the southern governors’ call for Nigeria’s next president to come from the region.

“You cannot completely and totally tie the voters of the North and say that he should not vote for any party which presents a northerner for the post of president. You have to persuade people, you have to do the hard work of politics.

“People who believe that having a Southern presidency is essential to the survival of this country should in the name of God stand up to do the real work of lobbying and politics and persuading people that the future of this country depends on the emergence of a South. President.

“But, you can’t do it by threat, intimidation and blackmail. If you keep pushing this rhetoric that it has to be the president of the south or we will leave this country or the skies will fall, then voters in the north will say, what about my right to choose who I want? What are you doing with my right? How can you force me to choose a southerner if I have the choice to choose a northerner or a southerner?

“This is the point we made. You can’t legislate that, it’s not in the law, ”he said.