Second Republic Minister and
ex-Chairman of Northern Elder’s Forum, NEF, Paul Unongo, has said that power
will remain in the North after President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure in 2023.
He said the North will keep
providing because they have an overwhelming population, adding it will be
morally right for them to contest the Presidency after Buhari’s eight years in
office.
Buttressing his point, Unongo
added that the challenge for the Northerners was that they have the ingredients
to quicken the face and practice of democratization in Nigeria.
According to the elder statesman,
the northerners are not greedy and do not insist, they believe that whatever
happens is the will of Allah and that only Allah gives leadership.
Asked if it was morally right for
any politician from the region to contest for presidency in 2023, Unongo told
Sun, “Yes, it will be morally right, that was why I told you that we are practicing
budding and evolving democratic system and issues of primordial concern still
exist.
“There was a president in the
United States called Gorge Bush, his son became President of Unites State also
and up to now, we have not finished with the Bushs, one of his sons was also a
governor at the time, the brother was a president.
“This feeling that let’s choose
people based on their competence, their eloquence of delivery, their capacity
to convince us that they will represent and deliver on our peculiar interest
should be the determining factors, not based on ethnicity, tribe and blood
relationship. Eventually, Nigeria will grow to that, but for now, the North
will give the leadership because they have an overwhelming population if they
keep the unity of the North intact.
“I am from the Middle Belt and I
fought the hegemony of the far North. We wanted to have our own Middle Belt
region and we fought and went to the constitutional conference with the like of
Patrick Dokatry, myself and the late Joseph Tarka, I was the secretary and we
insisted that they should create the Middle Belt state and grant it
independence, but Nigeria was too concerned about protecting what they will
look at as estate and the Middle Belt never came, but Gowon came to power and many
regions came from the Middle Belt, we had the Benue-Plateau state, we had
Adamawa and Taraba as their own states….If you have satisfied the West, you
have to satisfy the East and the North, the North is bigger than all the others
put together.
“The challenge for the
Northerners is that they have the ingredients to quicken the face and practice
of democratization in Nigeria because northerners are not greedy and they don’t
insist, they believe that whatever happens is the will of Allah and that only
Allah gives leadership.”
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