Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum says it will support an Igbo candidate for president

SOCIO-cultural group the Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum (YRLF) has backed the suggestion that Nigeria's next president should come from the southeast geo-political zone as 2023 should be the turn of the Igbos to produce the country's leader.

Although not constitutional, Nigeria's component parts have a gentleman's agreement that the presidency will rotate between the north and the south of the country. President Muhammadu Buhari's tenure will end in 2023 and being a Fulani northern Muslim, it is expected that the next president will come from southern Nigeria.

Since the return to democracy in 1999, the southwest has produced President Olusegun Obasanjo and the south-south President Goodluck Jonathan, so come 2023, the presidency should automatically go to the southeast. Amid claims that the southeast is being marginalised by the government of President Buhari, numerous Igbo groups have argued for the recreation of the defunct republic of Biafra that existed briefly between July 1967 and January 1970.

Heating up the debate further, candidates from other geo-political zones have declared their interest in running for president next year. Among the candidates to have thrown their hats into the ring are prominent Yoruba leader from the southwest Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the former Lagos State governor.

However, YRLF president Akin Malaolu, explained that the forum would not be tricked into supporting any other presidential aspiration other than one from the southeast geo-political; zone.  He added that the declaration of Asiwaju Tinubu for the 2023 presidency, is a trouble-making adventure.

Mr Malaolu said Asiwaju Tinubu was within his rights as a Nigerian to go for it but that for the purpose of further clarity, he recent visit to  President Buhari is a troublemaking misstep. According to the YRLF, that visit, where Asiwaju Tinubu declared his intentions, created an impact that may unbalance the present drivers of the party the All Progressives Congress, the Progressive Governors’ Forum and enlarge the fault lines already visible.

YRLF  stated that presidential interest from any tribe other than from the Igbos may take Nigeria into deeper political trouble that may set the nation ablaze if care was not taken. According to the forum, it had taken inventory of conditions in the diversity of the country and the findings convinced them that the fate of the vast people and ethnic nationalities across Nigeria could only be made well if Nigerians rotate the office of the president amongst themselves.

Furthermore, the YRLF pleaded with the leaders, mostly in the south, not to play the traitor role over this matter. It stressed that it had taken a position to support an Igbo presidency come 2023 and there was no going back on this.