2023: Zoning on agenda as PANDEF reiterates opposition to northern presidency

The thorny issue of zoning continued to elicit varied reactions from stakeholders as the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) again insisted against the election of another president of northern extraction in 2023.

The group asserted that electing a president from the north could result in civil war between the north and south of the nation.

PANDEF’s National Publicity Secretary, Ken Robinson, issued this warning at a consultation meeting with Prince Adewale Adebayo, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate, on Tuesday night at his Abuja home.

If a Northern candidate wins the presidency in the 2023 election, he declared that PANDEF would organize protesters from the streams and streets of the entire nation.

He said, “The statement is not a threat and we are serious. We will mobilise our people in the creeks, in the farmlands, in the streets across Nigeria, and people who think that Nigerians should work together.

“I had said on a programme on national TV that if the two major political parties produce northern candidates, it will be a declaration of war against southern Nigeria. We are in a situation where an administration has operated in a system as if others don’t exist.

Read also: Strike: ASUU endangering Nigeria’s education system – PANDEF

“We are saying it’s unfair, not proper, and it’s on record. We are taking our campaigns to the South-South, we have friends in the middle belt and in northern Nigeria, we are taking it to Nigerians of goodwill and clear conscience in northern Nigeria, so that they will know that we need to work together for this country to exist, prosper, and become greater than what we are. We will speak to all Nigerians why the next president should come from southern Nigeria; anything otherwise, we are not saying this as a threat, Nigeria will no longer be what it has been if 2023 goes to the north”.

The major political parties ahead of the 2023 elections are the All Progressives Congress, the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party.

Only the PDP fields a candidate of National extraction with Atiku Abubakar winning its primaries ahead of the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike.

Bola Tinubu and Peter Obi — both Southerners — are the candidates of the APC and the LP respectively.

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