Southern Nigeria will not support any party that picks candidate from north in 2023 – Akeredolu

The Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, said on Friday the southern part of the country would not support any political party that picks a candidate of northern extraction in the 2023 presidential election.

The Southern Governors Forum had on Thursday renewed its call for the region to produce the country’s next President in two years’ time.

The governors had earlier demanded that President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor must come from the south during their meeting held on July 5 in Lagos.

Akeredolu, who stated this during an interview on Channels Television, said the forum has unanimously agreed that the presidency must be zoned to the region in 2023 for justice and equity.

He said: “There are about three political parties in the Southern Governors’ Forum. We have the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and All Progressives Congress (APC). All of us are unanimous in our position that the next President of this country must come from the south.

“For us, we are unanimous. It is not a political platform. I believe that any party that picks somebody from the north would have to face the whole southern region, southern government because they would not support it.

“But it has to come from the south. We are saying that there must be what I will call a rotational presidency. The justice of it, the fairness in it, that is what we are preaching.

“If my President – President Buhari — has been in office for eight years, so it can’t be from the north, the next President must come from the south.

“There are many people that are competent. We have competent people in the north as we have competent people in the south, so the President can come from any part of the country.”

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