A former presidential spokesman, Doyin Okupe, has insisted that the presidency will not return to the North, advising the North to banish any thought of taking back power in 2027.
Okupe said even if President Bola Tinubu fails to get a second term, the South would retain power based on the principle of rotation that has been established.
Okupe was speaking on Arise TV a few days after telling NewsNGR in an exclusive interview that President Tinubu deserved commendation for “suffering” in Aso Rock to tackle maladministration and rots from the past administration of Muhammadu Buhari.
He told NewsNGR that Tinubu’s performance even though better days were ahead had earned him an automatic second term, dismissing the opposition parties as lacking organisation, manifesto, and personality to deny the president a second term.
Okupe told Arise TV that, “Those who control the affairs of this nation, in terms of politics before now, were more interested in national interest than sectional interest.
“Our failure to evolve a national elite system is one of the most fundamental problems why Nigeria is stagnating because we all pull in different directions.
“For 2027, we politicians, and I say that authoritatively without any fear of contradiction or equivocation, in 2027, power cannot return to the North yet. That’s not how we do it.
“We rotate between the North and the South. The North does eight years, at the end of which the South does eight years.
“I’m not saying that Bola Tinubu must be president in 2027, but it’s not going to be a northerner.”
Speaking further, he expressed regret over the failure of former leaders like Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdulsalami Abubakar, and TY Danjuma to cultivate a younger generation of elite leaders, noting that: “These are some of the people who have managed the affairs of this country in terms of political balancing for the last 25 years.
“Unfortunately, and I regret to say this, they’ve not been able to raise an elite class, a younger group, that can effectively take over from them along the same platforms on which we have grounded this polity that it is the way it is today.”