Governor of Ondo, Rotimi Akeredolu, has again declared that the Presidency of the country must return to the south of Nigeria in 2023.
Akeredolu, who spoke on Wednesday, August 10, in an interview on Channels Television, said he is only interested in having power return to the south, irrespective of which of the presidential candidates of southern extraction gets it.
He further stated that he will not have any issues if Peter Obi, Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), wins the 2023 election.
Akeredolu is a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Bola Tinubu, former Lagos Governor, is the presidential candidate of the party.
Tinubu and Obi hail from Nigeria’s south.
On numerous occasions, Akeredolu has insisted that the presidency must go to the south, since President Muhammadu Buhari, whose tenure will be completed in 2023, is from the north.
Asked if he would have supported a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket if he was in the opposition party, the Ondo governor said religion should not be an issue in the 2023 elections.
“I would have said the same thing. If you had listened to my lecture today, I was very clear. I said that religion is not the issue now,” he said.
“We have other issues that should be on the front burner today in this country — issue of restructuring, issue of rotational presidency, among others.
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“I said, ‘look, since 1999, there is an understanding that we will move from north to south — rotate the presidency’. And if today, we have people who want to deploy what I call manipulation of our people on religious basis to think that they can change this (call for southern presidency), then we should not accept it.
“For me, it is not because of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. If you listened to my lecture, I said if Obi is elected as President, for me, that will be alright. If Bola Tinubu is elected, that will be alright. For me, it must come to the south; that is the position.”