Presidency: North Will Wait Till 2019 To Field Young, Vibrant Candidate, Says Group

SAN FRANCISCO, January 26, (THEWILL) – A Northern socio-political group, the Northern Solidarity Movement (NSM), Monday declared that the North will wait till 2019 when it would field a young and vibrant candidate for the position of president.

The group, in a statement signed by its Coordinator, Alhaji Isa Abubakar, said its position was informed by the recent comments credited to spokesperson of Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Professor Ango Abdullahi, to the effect that the North has endorsed General Muhammadu Buhari as the region's candidate for the 2015 presidential election.

The group however reacted to the comments, saying: “We note with amusement the comments recently credited to Professor Ango Abdullahi, spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), that the North has endorsed General Muhammadu Buhari as the Northern candidate for the 2015 elections.

“For the avoidance of doubt, nothing can be farther from the truth because the North never met anywhere to endorse any candidate.

“Indeed, it is widely accepted that after the second term of President Goodluck Jonathan, the north shall produce the next president of Nigeria in 2019.

“For such a northern candidate to emerge in 2019, we are ready to wait to enable President Jonathan run his second term and pass the baton to us. The present attempt by Buhari is not only a misadventure but a guaranteed failure.”

According to the group, only Professor Abdullahi and his coterie of friends within the NEF had endorsed Buhari, stressing that “the rest of us who are clear-sighted and pragmatic northerners have made up our minds to wait until 2019 when the coast will be clear to field a younger and more vibrant candidate who will not be carrying a baggage of having been a dictator, a loser of three previous elections, certificate scandal and one whose health is suspect.”

The group stated further: “We will choose a candidate who will be cerebral enough to know that soldiers cannot be deployed to fight economic problems; one who will match integrity with a lucid and analytical mind; and one who will know that in this century women are partners with men in national development.

“We will field a candidate who will not only sustain President Jonathan's Agriculture Transformation Agenda, but also improve on it. Under Jonathan between 2012 and 2014, 10.5 million farmers were empowered across the Northern states, constituting 75 per cent of a total of the 14 million farmers who benefited from the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme and E-Wallet programme.

“The highest numbers of beneficiaries are from the North West with 4.2 million beneficiaries, North Central with 3.2 million and 2.9 million from the North East respectively.

“Still on agriculture, which we all know is the mainstay of the Northern economy, for the first time in our history, available statistics show that in 2013 alone 1.1 million metric tonnes of dry season rice was produced across 10 Northern states; ensuring that over 250,000 farmers and youths in those states are now profitably engaged in farming even during the dry season.”

The group continued: “Moreover, as it has been pointed out by some observers, the fact that yam farmers are said to be contributing N5 billion to the campaign efforts of a particular candidate is a testament to the fact that President Jonathan's agricultural policies are producing positive results; and we know the bulk of yam farmers are in the North.

“In the field of Education, apart from the fact that President Jonathan established the only Federal University in Buhari's home state of Katsina, it is also a verifiable fact that on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, President Jonathan was in Sokoto State to commission the first of over 150 purpose-built schools specifically designed to take hundreds of thousands of our children (Almajiris) off the streets to give them proper education.

“Without going into a lengthy dissertation on what President Jonathan has done for the North, we have shown that Professor Abdullahi and his NEF friends do not and can never speak for the North. We Northerners can attest to what President Jonathan has achieved in the region and we fully support him for a second term.”