A former presidential spokesperson, Doyin Okupe, has insisted that the presidency will not return to the north in 2027, even if the incumbent, President Bola Tinubu, fails to get a second term.
Okupe made this known on Monday during an interview with Arise TV while tackling those agitating for the Northern presidency in the next electoral cycle.
He said, “Those who control the affairs of this nation, in terms of politics before now, were more interested in national interest than sectional interest.
“Our failure to evolve a national elite system is one of the most fundamental problems why Nigeria is stagnating because we all pull in different directions.
“For 2027, we politicians, and I say that authoritatively without any fear of contradiction or equivocation, in 2027, power cannot return to the North yet. That’s not how we do it.
“We rotate between the North and the South. The North does eight years, at the end of which the South does eight years.
“I’m not saying that Bola Tinubu must be president in 2027, but it’s not going to be a northerner.”
Speaking further, he expressed regret over the failure of former leaders like Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdulsalami Abubakar, and TY Danjuma to cultivate a younger generation of elite leaders, noting that: “These are some of the people who have managed the affairs of this country in terms of political balancing for the last 25 years.
“Unfortunately, and I regret to say this, they’ve not been able to raise an elite class, a younger group, that can effectively take over from them along the same platforms on which we have grounded this polity that it is the way it is today.”
Vanguard