A pressure group called the North-South Progressive Stakeholders has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to honor the unwritten agreement he made with the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, before taking office in 2015.
The group, which made the appeal at a press conference held on Sunday in Abuja, said the president’s apathy toward Tinubu’s campaign was to blame for the terrifying strain on the North-South alliance by suspected elements in the Presidency.
WITHIN NIGERIA recalls that Nasir El-Rufai, the Governor of Kaduna State, claimed earlier this week that some ‘elements’ in Aso Rock were working against Tinubu’s victory.
This was stated by the governor during an interview on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily.
Alwan Hassan, speaking to journalists on Sunday, North-South Progressive Stakeholders, insisted that the situation would have been different if the President had kept his promise.
Hassan argued that it would be disloyal for the President and the North to refuse to repay Tinubu’s 2015 act by ensuring his election in 2023.
The APC stalwart maintained that the events leading up to the 2023 election have sparked widespread concern.
He lamented that those behind the ruse were attempting to discredit the North-South progressive alliance and jeopardize its unwritten agreement.
He said;
These individuals with their clandestine motives have continued to play with our unity as a country, using their powers to inflict needless hardship on Nigerians for their selfish and devilish interests.
Our demand to Mr. President is that we understand there was an agreement, though not written between him and before Asiwaju, before we went for the primaries in 2014.
We plead with him to keep to that promise. Asiwaju made sure that no Yoruba man from the South-West at the 2014 APC primaries contested primaries against Mr President. The same thing happened in 2019. Even without that agreement, Asiwaju has done a lot to put this government in place.
We campaigned and voted for Muhammadu Buhari in 2003 and lost. Though we won the election, we were rigged out by the PDP. In 2007 and 2011, it was the same thing. But when Asiwaju came with the southwest and entered this promise with Mr. President, he delivered Buhari as president.
We, in the North, will ever be thankful for this and want the president to, please, seal this alliance between us and ensure he comes out openly to campaign and tell the Northerners, the 12 million voters that have been consistently voting for him, to vote for Asiwaju in the next election.