Nasir El-Rufai, Kaduna State governor, has said it is foolish for anyone to sit in Lagos or Port Harcourt and demand that power must shift to the south in 2023.
The Northern Governors’ Forum (NGF), at a meeting in Kaduna on Monday, declared calls by their southern counterparts for power to shift to the region as “unconstitutional”.
According to Daily Trust, El-Rufai, in a chat with selected journalists, said no one should assume that they can just decide what the north should do or who the north should vote for.
The governor said if the south wants power, it should be prepared to sit with the north, dialogue, negotiate, than use compulsion to demand power shift.
“We are not saying there cannot be rotational presidency, it can be done but you have to come and sit with the politicians in the north and dialogue and then we agree to give our support to the south but no one has the right to sit in Lagos or Port Harcourt and say whether northerners want it or not, they must relinquish power to the south, that is wrong, it is not how we do politics and in fact, it is foolish,” he said.
The Kaduna governor was one of the first governors to suggest a power shift to the south.
In 2020, he had said it would be in the interest of fairness and unity for the north to relinquish power to the south after eight years under President Muhammadu Buhari.
After El-Rufai, similar statements were also made by Babagana Zulum of Borno State, Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, and Aminu Masari of Katsina State.
However, some of the governors were part of the meeting in Kaduna on Monday.
