*Northerners, Atiku Have No Business Contesting
*Insists Defection Won’t Sour Ties With Atiku
ADAMAWA State Governor, Ahmadu Fintiri, has thrown his weight behind the retention of the 2027 presidency in the southern part of Nigeria, saying no northerners, including former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, from his state, have no business joining the race.
Fintiri, who recently defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), said on a television programme on Tuesday, March 3, that although anybody can vie for any political office, the southern region should retain the presidency in the interest of fairness and unity of the country.
According to him: “There is no business of anybody in the north to do with the presidency at the moment. It is the turn of the south; they should complete their eight years, if we are really serious about this country.
“It should rotate, so that we will all be brother’s keepers.”
Atiku, the presidential candidate of the PDP in the 2023 general elections, has since dumped the party to join the African Democratic Congress (ADC) to realise his life-long ambition.
However, the governor of his state specifically canvassed support for APC’s President Bola Tinubu, saying: “What else do we want as a state? We won’t force anybody to be a presidential candidate, which means we will continue to support our people to play local politics.
“Everybody knows we are organised, and if we push further, we can still win elections. But who is that person who has come out to say he wants to contest for the presidential election in the PDP? We have seen none for now.”
He insisted that he has had a good relationship with Atiku, saying that despite aligning with the ruling APC, there is no strained communication with the former vee pee as a result of political differences.
He stated: “I still have, there is nothing that has gone bad. It is just that everybody has taken their political ways. I am today in APC, they are in another party.
“It is still the turn of the South to complete. A northerner has no business at the moment to vie for the office of the President.
“If there is no other candidate, we should support Tinubu to complete his tenure. After all, he has done so much. He initiated good policies that are working, that are showing us light at the end of the tunnel.”
