2023 presidency: El-Rufai declares his position on replacing Buhari

El-Rufai has declared his position in the 2023 Presidential race and Northerner’s succession of President Buhari. 

The Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai has allegedly promised not to back a northerner to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2023 Presidential election.

El-Rufai had said earlier this year that the North has no justification to remain in power after the finishing of President Muhammadu Buhari’s second tenure.

El-Rufai insisted that the Presidency should rightly return to the Southern part of Nigeria.

OnyxNews Nigeria reports that there have been arguments over the 2023 presidency coming to the south.

Supporting the motion, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, has revealed that the All Progressives Congress (APC) had in 2014 agreed to rotate the presidency.

Speaking in an interview with BBC Hausa on Saturday, El-Rufai maintained that the next president of Nigeria should come from the south.

While denying interest in the 2023 presidency, the Kaduna state Governor described such thinking as baseless.

El-Rufai’s words,  “In Nigerian politics, there is a system of rotation, in which everyone agrees that if the north rules for eight years, the south will rule for eight years.

“That is why I came out and said that after President Buhari has been in office for eight years, no northerner should run for office. Let the Southerners also have eight years.

“If you look at how I am, I don’t take anyone to work with me for the zone he came from. The eligibility I look at is if who is entrusted to the public will hold it properly.

“It has been said that I have loved the presidency since I was a minister in the FCT. This is nonsense. I do not want the Nigerian presidency. God gives power, whether you like it or not, if He wants it, He will give it to you, but I have never sought the presidency of Nigeria, no one can say I have ever sought it.”