News Editor
A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Segun Sowunmi, has asked Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State to dump the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Sowunmi, a spokesman for the PDP Presidential Campaign Council in 2019, made the remark during an interview on Friday’s episode of Politics Today on Channels Television.
“If I was to take anybody from APC … I think I will be looking at Yahaya Bello,” he said in response to a question on who he would support to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari, other than a member of the main opposition party.
“Why? He (Bello) is young, he ticks your box. He’s been a governor. I have been watching the kinds of things he’s doing, I read the kind of people who are endorsing him, but I know that he is in the party where they will never look at him.
“So maybe I will just say to my friend Yahaya, ‘come to PDP; even if you don’t get Presidency now, we will make you a president one day in our party’. But if you stay with that party, I don’t trust them. They don’t like young people … the only thing they are interested in is their narrow fixation on what they interpret to be the Nigeria of now.”
As Nigerians anticipate the process to elect another leader into the highest office in the land, political actors and parties have begun to intensify efforts at getting their anointed candidate to succeed the President.
Although President Buhari has said he would prefer to keep the identity of his preferred candidate undisclosed, some of the APC members tipped for the office of the Presidency include Yemi Osinbajo, Bola Tinubu, Godswill Akpabio, Rotimi Amaechi, Rochas Okorocha, and Yahaya Bello, among others.
Among those in the PDP are Atiku Abubakar, Aminu Tambuwal, Bukola Saraki, Goodluck Jonathan, Pius Anyim, Bala Mohammed, and Peter Obi.
Despite his position on Governor Bello, Sowunmi believes Atiku remains the best candidate to be elected in the 2023 elections.
According to him, the former vice president fits into the attribute required of the next president, such as age and fitness, religion, ethnicity and zoning, quality of character, ideas, as well as someone who has a unifying persona that can help galvanise the nation.
“I have always said, when it comes to Atiku Abubakar, the issue is not really about where he comes from; the issue is usually about the kind of ideas he stands for over the years,” the PDP chieftain stated.
He added, “I believe that where people come from is an accident on birth and I also hold very strongly that in this country, there is one error we make often – we tend to assume that there are three souths made up of the south-south, the south-east and the south-west and then when we get to the north, we pretend that there is just one north.
“To the best of my knowledge, the North Central has not produced a president in this dispensation; the North East has not produced a president in this dispensation; the South East has not produced a president in this dispensation.”
Channels TV
