From Tony Osauzo, Benin
AHEAD of the 2023 Presidential election, a sexagenarian and political activist, Austin Braimoh, has said that for equity and display of sense of unity in the country, the major political parties should produce their presidential candidates from the South-East.
This according to him is to give the region a sense of belonging and to ensure fair play.
Braimoh, a member of the Police Service Commission (PSC), who spoke to journalists in Benin City, also called on former governor of Lagos State and national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, to bury his presidential ambition if any and support an Easterner with a national outlook, who he said abound in the region.
He noted that there is homogeneity in the Northern part of the country, the reason a particular section can produce the president in succession and there would not be acrimony, a situation he said is lacking in the South.
“I want to appeal to politicians who are asking that zoning should be jettisoned, who are saying that zoning should no longer be considered, to realize that they are trying to perpetuate injustice and you cannot have true peace without justice.
”I feel so sorry for those who think that they can hide under one finger to say that the South-Eastern part of Nigeria should not present the next president of Nigeria. I want to appeal to our leader, our father, Alhaji Ahmed Bola Tinubu that I know him as a man of big heart, I know that he would at the appropriate time come out to say that he is throwing his support for a South-Eastern candidate”.
Braimoh recalled that all major actors agreed in 1998 to compensate the South-West with the presidency over the death of MKO Abiola and then the presidency would rotate between the North and South, a process he said has produced President Olusegun Obasanjo from South-West and President Goodluck Jonathan from the South-South.
“For those who are arguing that late Yar’Adua is from the North West and President Muhammadu Buhari is from the same zone, they should understand that Southern Nigeria have clear cultural boundaries but the North do not have the same clear cultural boundaries, Northerners are homogenous, they don’t have the same cultural divide like the South. It is not the same thing with the South-East, South-South and South-West.
“South-South has produced a President, South-West has produced a President, the next place should be South-East, any attempt to deny the South East of that opportunity, amounts to injustice and it is ungodly to say the least”, Braimoh argued.