Former Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Laolu Akande, has affirmed that rotational presidency is now a permanent feature of Nigeria’s political landscape. He emphasized that ending Southern presidency in 2027 would be a significant challenge.
Akande made these remarks during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Lagos.
Dismissing discussions of political mergers and plans to shift power back to the North in 2027 as unrealistic, Akande described such efforts as mere “child’s play,” asserting that they are unlikely to succeed.
“I think it is just child’s play to terminate Southern presidency in 2027. Nigeria has gone past that.
“The South is going to get its eight years. The North will get the next eight years.
“Politicians are just going to make noise. It is not going to be possible, really, to terminate the Southern term.
“Rotational presidency has come to stay in Nigeria. There is a national consensus around the idea of a rotational presidency between the South and the North.
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“Anybody trying to reverse that is just joking. It’s not going to work,” he said.
Speaking on a possible merger among opposition political parties in 2027 against the ruling APC, Akande said mergers would not birth solutions to the country’s problems.
“All of these political mergers are not going to solve the problems of Nigeria.
“In 2014, there was a merger that led to the APC. There were a lot of expectations in this country. APC carried the national wave. Nine years after, where are we?
“We are nowhere different from where we were then because the core issues have been left unaddressed.
“So all of these mergers, even if they (proponents) succeed, what is going to happen is that they will just change the characters of people in the Government House.
“We need to understand that there are fundamental problems that have to be sorted out, and we cannot leave it to politicians,” he added.
He called on Nigerians to unite against common challenges, reiterating that politicians were those benefiting from the system.
According to him, Nigerians ahead of the 2027 elections must have discussions around national consensus on the rule of law, fighting poverty and corruption, issues of local government autonomy, restructuring, and the constitution.
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