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.”