North May Not Produce President In 2015 – Group

A group, Concerned Arewa Patriots (CAP), has argued that except the North puts its house in order, its 2015 presidential aspiration will be an unrealisable dream.
This was even as it faulted the usual practice of the northern region selecting candidates for political offices based on sentiment.
The National Coordinator of the group, Hon Maiyaki Idris said this while addressing the press in Sokoto.
He stressed that post 2015 and subsequent political dispensations in Nigeria would be free from turmoil if power-sharing formula was based on merit.
Absence of this the group said had caused both embryonic and manifest ill feelings that must be corrected should the north wants to produce the President come 2015.
Maiyaki also said that should the north want the presidency in 2015, then, its choice of a consensus candidate must be on credibility, incorruptibility, marketability and record of accomplishment and nationalism. This was just as it said that religious, ethnic and political sentiments would lead the region to nowhere.
He also called on all stakeholders from the region to support its 2015 presidential agenda and wade off undue tension, debate and legal tussle that have given rise to suspicion and insecurity in the nation today.
According to Maiyaki, incessant political crises have not only had adverse effect on our national unity but also on governance. “The nation has survived continuous ripples of political crisis and civil war within the first decade of our independence thereby standing as a watershed to our national unity.
“Civil strikes; ethnic and partisan violence, intolerance, disaffection and general apathy have repeatedly truncated our peaceful coexistence with very serious consequences on governance of the polity.”
“We make this humble appeal as an initiative for all agencies of the North to begin to consider in order generating total cooperation and support for our common consensus candidate come 2015,” Maiyaki maintained.