- Demands respect for fairness, inclusiveness, national unity
- Says South West, South-South had Obasanjo, Jonathan
BY VICTOR BUORO – With less than 10 days to this year’s presidential election, one-time Secretary General of the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, Senator Femi Okunrounmu, has challenged Nigerians to demonstrate fairness, and inclusiveness by supporting the South-East Presidency through Peter Obi of the Labour Party on February 25, 2023
Senator Okunrounmu said power shifting to the South, particularly the South East geo-political zone after President Muhammadu Buhari’s eight years tenure, would clearly show the citizens’ respect for the abiding covenant of national engagement and unity.
Maintaining that his position on the presidential poll was based on the fact that other parts of Southern Nigeria have enjoyed their shots at the Presidency, Okunrounmu warned thus; “Let it be said that no argument of democracy based on the flawed Nigerian demographic statistics will make a Northerner succeeding Buhari see the light of the day nor will an enactment of Fulani/Yoruba rotation of power through the elections peacefully come to pass.”
In a statement titled “The Imperative of Nigerian President from South East Extraction”, the former Afenifere scribe said federal character and power rotation were paramount in ensuring the unity and peace of the country, adding the resolutions arrived at the 2014 CONFAB convened by the then President Goodluck Jonathan have since become the new testament of our national political engagement.
According to him; “One of the fundamental gains from the conference which derived from earlier conferences under Abacha and Obasanjo was the rotation of the office of the President between the North and South and amongst the constituent six geo-political zones.
“Thus, those who delinquently run their mouths against Ayo Adebanjo, leader of Afenifere, for expressing, in the strongest terms that the denial of the South East its legitimate turn, may sound the death knell of the federation are only being hypocritical or in the uneasy foreboding of losing unmerited privileges in the Nigeria contraption.”
Okunrounmu, who chaired the Presidential Advisory Committee on the 2014 National Conference, further stated that; “Those who gleefully share the nation’s resources based on the federal character cannot hypocritically seek to jettison the principle in the access to the Presidency of Nigeria without dire consequences for its continued corporate existence.”
Advancing further argument in support of Peter Obi’s candidacy, he said; “While the military imposed the 1999 Constitution, it has made itself not amenable in its fundamental essence; the rotational principle has become the binding convention which can only be breached at the health of the federation”.
For him, the rotational presidency arrangement also strongly supports the South East zone given that “the South West and South-South had taken their turns through Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, respectively.”
