O
Oladipo Abiola
Guest
A former chieftain of the Labour Party (LP), Doyin Okupe, has submitted that the North can’t return to the presidency in 2027.
The former presidential aide submitted that without any fear of contradiction or equivocation, the North needs to forget about the 2027 presidency.
Speaking during an interview with Arise News on Monday, Okupe said there’s an unwritten agreement between the North and South on power rotation, which must be respected.
On the fate of President Bola Tinubu, Okupe said it is not compulsory that the incumbent leader must retain power in 2027, but it must be a southerner and not a northerner.
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,” he explained. “I’m not saying that Bola Tinubu must be president in 2027, but it’s not going to be a northerner.”
Okupe, however lamented the inability of former Nigerian leaders, including Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdulsalami Abubakar, and TY Danjuma, to nurture a younger generation ready to take up the responsibilities of leadership after them.
He said: “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.”
Okupe cautioned the north against sponsoring another southerner against President Tinubu in the 2027 election, noting that such may create further problems for the northern region as such a person may be in power for another eight years before the northerners can lay claim to the presidency again.
He praised the reforms under President Tinubu, submitting that the pains are only temporary and the benefits would soon start manifesting.
“Today, Bola Tinubu has made poverty not to be an issue or an excuse not to be educated. There’s a loan fund which he promised in his agenda that he’s going to do that is now operative,” Okupe said.
He concluded by noting that “there is nowhere any reforms take place that there are no temporary pains, and if there are no pains, there are no gains.”
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