Southern governors’ gratuitous blackmail on 2023 presidency
By
Thu Jul 08 2021
If proof was ever needed that our political elite have learnt nothing from our political travails as a country, the outcome of the meeting of the 17 Southern governors in Lagos on Monday, July 5, 2021, was a stone cold affirmation of it.
Rising from a five-hour conclave, the governors were in their usual petulant, grumpy, tantrum best; reeling out a laundry list of ultimatums on burning issues in the country ranging from insecurity, open grazing, the just passed Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) to the grandfather of them all, power rotation.
On power rotation, they thundered that the 2023 presidential election must be exclusively reserved for candidates from the South; meaning that the two major political parties, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) must both field candidates from the Southern part of the country. Candidates from any of the three Northern geopolitical zones: North West, North East and North Central, should not have a look in, but leave the field for candidates from the South.