The Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdul’Aziz Abubakar Yari, has appealed to northerners to allow President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to complete his eight-year tenure as a way of respecting the established principle of rotational presidency in Nigeria.
Yari, who spoke to journalists at the Kano Government House
after holding a closed-door meeting with Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf
on Saturday, said the only viable option now was for the North to be
gentlemanly in the arrangement and allow Tinubu to complete his eight-year
tenure.
The former Zamfara State governor said the North should
understand and respect the political arrangement that brought the presidency to
the South in 2023, arguing that the presidency had been held by a northerner
for several years before the emergence of Tinubu.
Yari said, “66 years ago since independence, the country was
led by northerners for 47 years,” adding that Nigerians should recognise the
importance of maintaining unity and understanding how the country’s political
system operates.
According to him, Nigeria remains a country that all
citizens must work together to protect, regardless of regional or political
differences.
“As we love this country, we don’t have any country other
than Nigeria. Nigerians should understand how this country works. It is also
better than many nations,” Yari said.
The APC chieftain explained that his role as
Director-General of the campaign council was not limited to promoting President
Tinubu but also included promoting national unity and understanding among
Nigerians.
Yari said the current political arrangement should be
respected, noting that former President Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner,
governed the country between 2015 and 2023 before power shifted to Tinubu from
the South in 2023.
“Having said this, this country, Nigeria, from 2015 to 2023
was led by a northerner, and now from 2023 to 2026 it is led by a southerner,”
he said.
He appealed to northerners not to seek to overturn the
existing zoning arrangement on the basis of the region’s population, saying the
political understanding was important for national stability.
“If we say we want to uproot the zoning arrangement because
of our numbers, then my call for northerners is to understand how it works.
They even understand more than I do,” Yari said.
He acknowledged that President Tinubu’s administration, like
every government, was not perfect, but argued that the challenges facing
Nigeria should not solely be attributed to the administration.
“Nobody is perfect. The southerners have also experienced
what we are complaining about today when President Buhari was in power,” he
said.
Yari also argued that insecurity was not peculiar to
Nigeria, saying countries across the world, including the United States,
continue to grapple with security challenges despite their level of
development.
“No problem of a country is solved by any government,
including even in the United States. They are managing insecurity as we are
managing it,” he said.
The APC campaign council Director-General further cited gun
violence in Chicago as an example of the security challenges faced by other
countries, stressing that every nation has its own problems that require
continuous efforts to address.
Turning to the economy, Yari said Nigerians should assess
the Tinubu administration based on economic indicators and compare the
situation when the President assumed office in 2023 with the current position.
“When you look at when Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu came to
power in 2023, go and check what was the state of our reserves and what it is
today, and what was the rate of inflation in 2023 and what it is today,” he
said.
Yari maintained that the administration was making efforts
to address the country’s economic and security challenges, while acknowledging
that governments at both federal and state levels were working to improve the
situation.
He urged Nigerians, particularly those in the North, to give
the political arrangement time, arguing that the presidency would return to the
region after Tinubu’s tenure if the existing rotation principle was maintained.
“I am calling on northerners to note that by the time Bola
Ahmed Tinubu finishes in 2031, it will definitely come back to the North. This
is how the arrangement is,” Yari said.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com