‘Why Northerners will vote against Buhari in 2019’
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Sebastian Uremadu is a professor and a political analyst at Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State. In this interview with UDOKA AGWU in Umuahia, Uremadu spoke on major issues currently trending in the nation’s political clime. He spoke extensively on why Arewa Consultative Forum, (ACF) and Arewa Youth Consultative Forum ( AYCF) and Northern Elders are not in support of President Buhari’s 2019 presidential bid and other national issues. Excerpts:
As a political analyst, what is your take on ACF/AYCF position on President Buhari’s 2019 2nd term ambition?
Well, the single most important reason why the President of AYCF and Secretary General of ACF, Shettima Yerima, Anthony Sani and their likes would not like Buhari to win in 2019 is not that he is not performing but because he would use only four years to complete his second term to make it eight years, but they do not like that. They want eight more years. Secondly, he has promised to hand over to the Igbos in 2023, if he wins in 2019.
You know that the eight years plus six years of Obasanjo and Jonathan’s rule did not augur well with some northern leaders. Some of them who only lived on government then could not bear it. It was like 100 years to them; hence they would want the north to be in power by Atiku taking over from Buhari. That is the issue.
Again, Yerima is among the northern people who would never want the Igbo become anything good in Nigeria, they and the likes of Ango Abdullahi, Kwankwaso would be rejoicing when the Igbo are perpetually marginalised and they shall be clapping their hands, shouting ‘Ranka dede’ to one another.
Whenever the Igbo are marginalised everybody is happy, but they should know that they are not God, who created the Igbo and Nigeria.
Igbo are a major ethnic nationality in Nigeria, which formed the three tripod stands on which the Nigerian nation leans. Any disruption of it as it has been since the end of civil war shall never go well for the nation
Peace, unity and prosperity shall only come when the north and, in fact, all Nigerians realise that it has to revert to what it used to be right from 1914 and in the days of Zik, Saduana and Awolowo, when the Southeast as a political bride joined with the north to form governments and then it would be alright. That is to say, any deviation from that natural course of things shall never go well for the Nigerian nation.
Sometime ago, an important person from the Middle Belt like Shettima Yerima, a doctorate degree holder in a chat, told me that he has sworn over the grave of his grandfathers that an Hausa-Fulani man shall never rule Nigeria again because, the Fulani herdsmen have killed his sister in Southern Zaria; that it would be the turn of the middle belt to rule, that Igbos should support them to win in 2019, and they would build infrastructure for the Igbos of Southeast.
I told him to shut up his mouth. In PDP primaries, did any of the middle belt man win? Even Bukola Saraki managed to get third position; and people like David Mark and Jerry Gana were nowhere near position of importance! Did Atiku Abubarkar not emerge as PDP flag bearer? The middle belt people are minorities in the north just like the people of South-South to the South-East and West of Nigeria. When you make a minor a major as Nigeria is trying to make the Igbos minor through state creation, things will not go well!
President Muhammadu Buhari shall win 2019 elections because he has good intentions for Nigeria notwithstanding Yerima’s hatred for Buhari’s bid to return back to power or for an Igbo becoming President in 2023. It is our turn and we shall produce the President in the next four years after Buhari.
The northern youths just like the Middle belt people are not to tell Nigerians who should rule and who should not; it has to be the decision of the three major tribes of Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo plus the minorities of the north, South-east and South-west.
This was how Shettima Yerima, last year, out of youthful exuberance, gave quit notice to the Igbos as if they own Nigeria. He and his likes have continued to fan embers of hatred against the Igbos thereby escalating IPOB agitations. It is unfortunate that he displayed his pathological hatred for the Igbos.
Some of the yardsticks of measuring the Buhari administration are the high level of hunger and poverty in the land. Do you truly think that such a leader deserves a second term?
I don’t think there is hunger in the land but if there is hunger, I think it is more due to our reluctance to slough off the old habit of consumption without production. I am sharing the Secretary General of ACF, Anthony Sani’s view here, because we have been used to easy life on oil wealth that is not a result of hard work. Buhari’s government is working hard to create an enabling environment for able-bodied Nigerians to work and fend for themselves through diversification of the economy which is not a day’s job but by conscientiously directing efforts to make what we desire possible.
What is your take on Atiku’s emergence as PDP flag bearer and choice of former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, as his running mate?
It is in order and it shall never pose a threat to the APC. The choice has come because both men are businessmen, they only know about how to make money either through fair or foul means. Had Atiku chosen a technocrat like Okonjo Iweala, it would have served him three purposes. One, she is a woman, two, she is a technocrat and three, she has dual link to Abia and Delta States. However, Peter Obi is a former governor and he performed in Anambra State as a governor. I would have regretted if he has chosen opportunists like Soludo and Ekweremadu as Vice President.
Generally, he has reasoned well by choosing his running mate from the South-east, since it would be the turn of the Igbos to produce President of Nigeria after the north. But their pair would not pose a problem to APC because President Buhari is performing in the three areas he has chosen, which include diversification of the economy into agriculture and industry and intensified fight against corruption.