A member of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Adamu Maina Waziri, has revealed that his party has concluded plans to produce its 2023 presidential candidate from the North.
Disclosing this to IgbereTv, Alhaji Waziri, who was the Minister of Police Affairs under President Goodluck Jonathan and also has been a BOT member of PDP for eighteen years and counting, said that the presidential ticket will be zoned to the North because there is an understanding to that effect.
Continuing, he said, “since democracy returned in 1999, the PDP has produced three presidents for 16 years: for president Obasanjo, there was unanimity in the country that he should be drafted, voted and elected because that time requires an Obasanjo in Nigeria to fix the country and return it to its past opportunities, path of good governance and cohesion. He did his best but unfortunately in Nigeria, people must also refer to that quality that brought him back, that he is a Christian and a southerner. After he finished his tenure, the successor must be a Muslim and a northerner. So events brought in Yar’adua who started ailing the moment he assumed the seat and he died. To maintain the system, the vice president took over, less than one year before the expiration of the tenure.
“In 2011, can we deny Jonathan that seat and bring someone to take over or allow him to continue? I think good conscience requires that he should be allowed to continue and I am one of those who supported his re-election in 2011 based on that consideration. It was based on written understanding that president Jonathan was going to do one term and fix certain inequalities that became visible in the administration of Nigeria. President Jonathan made a commitment and a public statement that he would like to amend the constitution such that the presidential tenure will be one term of five or six years. But for one reason or another, he reneged and it became the death knell of the PDP in 2015.
“As far as the PDP is concerned, the presidency should return to the North because the successor to president Jonathan in 2011 should have been a northern candidate, not Jonathan. That is the understanding in the PDP and that is what I subscribe to”. He concluded.
