El-Rufai declares support for return of power to Southern Nigeria in 2023

The Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, on Monday urged the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to ensure that power returns to the southern part of the country in 2023.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who is from a predominantly Muslim state of Katsina in North-West Nigeria, will complete his eight-year rule in 2023.

He took over from Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the South-South state of Bayelsa in 2015.

Many Nigerians including the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, had called for power to return to the southern part of the country in three years’ time.

El-Rufai, who stated this when he featured in a Channels Television’s programme, Politics Today, said it is important for the ruling party to honour the “informal agreement” of ensuring that power goes back to the southern part of Nigeria in 2023.

READ ALSO: El-Rufai disowns 2023 campaign posters

He said: “I think it is important to make this clarification. Personally, I am against zoning because I believe that no country has made progress choosing leaders based on where they come from or their ethnicity or religion. I am against and don’t practise it. I work with people from every part of the country. I don’t care about their religion or ethnicity; I just want to get things done with the most competent persons with capacity and commitment. That’s a personal position.

“However, I believe that as a party, after eight years of President Buhari, we should honour the informal agreement of ensuring that power goes to the South, whether it is South-West or South-East, that is a different matter.

“We have agreed, we have a gentleman’s agreement that power will go to the South and I support that. In as much as I don’t think we should select leaders that way but in the present day Nigeria, that is an interim measure to pursue. But having said that, our party has not taken any decision as far as I know.”

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