Shehu Sani: Southern Govs Betraying South-east

Omon-Julius Onabu in Asaba

Human rights activist and Kaduna State gubernatorial aspirant, Senator Shehu Sani, has accused governors of states from the Southern part of Nigeria of betraying the good people of South-east geopolitical zone on the issue zoning of the presidency in 2023.

Sani stated this  yesterday in Asaba in his presentation at the 2022 annual seminar organised by the Asaba Correspondents Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Delta State Council.

The senator, who represented Kaduna Central in the 8th National Assembly, said that it amounted to betrayal of the South-east and a capital spiritual sin for any Southern politician outside the South-east to be scheming to be running mates to presidential candidates of Northern  extraction or even to be seeking for the presidential ticket of political parties.

Recalling that Southern governors from different political parties had some time ago met and signed a documented agreement to support only presidential candidates from Southern Nigeria in 2023, Sani said that it was surprising that these governors appear today to have thrown that decision or agreement overboard.

He wondered while the people of the South-east should continue to suffer political ostracising for a rebel war that ended more than 50 years ago, saying it would be part of the national healing process for all parts of the country, and particularly Southern states, to zone the presidency to the South-east geo-political zone.

The senator, who commended the Dominic Adewole-led Asaba Correspondents Chapel of the NUJ for the seminar, made a strong case for rotational presidency, saying that it was clearly hypocritical for those who threw their weight behind quota system in the country should also see the wisdom in power rotation as a means of national unity and giving every part of Nigeria a sense of belonging.

Sani, who also described so many of presidential aspirants in the country as not serious but merely looking for bargaining positions for ministerial appointment, said that it was a shame that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was too naive to play its role of opposition party well.

He said “PDP is too elitist and cowardly” that it has woefully failed to play the role of opposition to the All Progressives Congress (APC) despite the obvious failure of the Buhari administration to fulfil practically all its electoral promises, including shoreing up the value of the naira, insecurity, epileptic power, end to subsidy on oil, national unity and the economy.

“Considering the numerous protest marches and public demonstration organised by the then opposition party against the Goodluck Jonathan government, it is suprising that the PDP leaders cannot unite, put their acts together and similarly trouble the APC by taking advantage of what is happening in the in country,” he observed.

“All the promises  by Buhari in 2015 have turned out to be lies. What is the difference between a Buhari who was in opposition and the Buhari as President? It is either he was ignorant of the enormity of the national challenges or he overrated himself,” Sani said, adding that all hope was not lost for Nigeria if Rwanda could survive genocidal war in 1994 to be united and stable today.

Sani said:”The Constitution, the national flag and the national anthem will not keep Nigeria together. Only equity, justice and fairness will keep Nigeria together. If leaders behave like ethnic chauvinists because election in the country is highly monetised and materialised, it will remain very difficult to have good and patriotic Nigerians in government.”

Delta State Governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, who was the guest of honour at the event, stressed the need for youth empowerment through job and wealth creation as well as human capital development through technical and vocational education as a means of engendering peace in the state.

Represented by the State Commissioner for Information, Mr. Charles Aniagwu, the governor noted that Delta moved from the fourth to the first oil producing state in the country not because the state got additional oil wells but because of his administration’s “smart economics.”

He used the opportunity to further explain the recent N150 billion “bridging finance” application approved by the state legislature, and stressed the need to act proactively in the light of inflationary trends in the country in other to offset debt incurred on projects executed by past and present government as well as to mitigate the pains of pensioners in the state.

Okowa appealed the people to get their voter card and vote in  the coming elections in order to deny dishonest leaders opportunity to take over the reins of government.

In his remarks, the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr. Olisa Ifeajika, commended the organisers  of the event and harped on the need to keep out media practitioners who constituted contaminating virus in the system.