NATIONAL President, Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Bishop Francis Wale Oke, has said that the next president should be a Christian from the South in order to forester unity, stability and peaceful co-existence in the country.
Oke, who is also President, Sword of the Spirit Ministries and Chancellor, Precious Conner Stone University, Ibadan Oyo State, said he meant either a South-East, South-West, South-South by the South, emphasising that the president ought not to be a Muslim.
The cleric, who was in Uyo for Uyo Miracle Convention organised by Uma Ukpai Evangelistic Ministry International, added that the country needed a leader that is God-fearing and cerebral enough to grasp the complexities of governance, saying that this became imperative because Nigeria, according to him, is a very complex nation with over 500 ethnic nationalities with everybody claiming attention.
While insisting on a Christian as the next president, he urged Nigerians to bury their ego and unbridled ambitions to achieve this, recalling that “Chief Obasanjo handed over to Yar’Adua, Yar’Adua handed over to Jonathan and Jonathan handed over to Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, and President Buhari shouldn’t hand over to a Muslim.”
“Without any doubt if we are interested in the stability of this country, the South should produce the next president and by the South I am talking of South East, South West, South South.
“The South in general, and not only should the South produce the next president, the next president ought to be a Christian not a Muslim, this is very important,” he said.
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Meanwhile, the Campaign for Democracy (CD), has also pitched its tent with those clamouring for power shift to the South.
The group however identified as imperative the need for emergence of a sellable presidential candidate, with qualities including the courage to make unpopular decisions, crisis management skills, character and integrity, an ability to work with all the six geo-political zones without biase, among others.
The group’s position came against the backdrop of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State recently insisting that power must be allowed to shift to the South in 2023, warning that any political party that refused to field a southerner as its presidential candidate would lose the election.
In a communiqué signed by its General Secretary, Ifeanyi Odili, the Campaign for Democracy said it aligned with the call for power shift to the South because it was in line with the principles of equity, justice and fair play.
The group posited that for the country to remain as one indivisible nation, there was the need for power to leave the North to the South to avert a crisis.
This was just as the rights group warned that for the Fulani/northern blocs to continue their dominance over the rest of other ethnic nationalities, the 1914 amalgamation has to be re-visited.
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