2023 Presidency: Arewa President Says No Igbo Will Ever Be President

By Akinwale Kasali

Some days after former Enugu State Governor, Senator Jim Nwobodo, said the time had come for a Nigerian of Igbo extraction to be the President of Nigeria,  the President of the Arewa Northern Youth Forum, Alhaji Yerima Shettima, has countered the 80 year old  Nwobodo.

Nwobodo had submitted in an interview that, for the sake of justice, Nigeria should let a South Easterner occupy the Presidential seat in 2023, being the only zone whose son has not occupied the seat.

But Shettima, as if in response, has just  declared that “no Igbo person will ever rule Nigeria.”

Shettima  spoke while briefing the press on  current disturbing issues in  the country, especially the  COVID-19 Pandemic and the roles played by the different ethnic groups in Nigeria.

According to him, “We are facing a very serious deadly challenge in the country now that has put so many lives in danger,  and caused the death of many  as a result of the COVID-19.

“Most ethnic groups we have in Nigeria played prominent roles in the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak but it’s obvious that the only tribe that contributed nothing or less in this fight are the Igbo, and they are busy warming up to come and rule Nigeria.

“We all saw how the Igbo rejected the Almajiris, the Fulani herdsmen and never wish to see them in their land, yet they want to come to our own land and rule us.

“We’ve concluded it that no Igbo man will ever rule this country, because they are not loyal, and even if we give them an opportunity, they will turn Nigeria upside down.

“Anyone of them who wants to come out for President should come out and face the highest humiliation he has ever seen before, because we, Northerners, will never vote for an Igbo man as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria” he said.

However, not a few Nigerians have dismissed him as ignorant, especially, those who contributed to the COVID-19 funds. They ask him to look at the financial institutions that contributed billions of Naira to the fund and those behind them, who aside from their institutions, also made huge personal contributions.

Among others, they point at Chief Emeka Offor, who has been busy building and donating hospitals and Isolation Centres in the North – Katsina and Taraba – and has not set up any in the South East. This is aside from the hundreds of thousands of US Dollars he donated to the COVID-19 fund.

On the  rejection of the Almajiris, they remind Shettima that it was the Northern Governors who, in a meeting, abolished the Almajiri culture of the North, and ordered that all Almajiris be transported back to their States of origin, especially in the era of COVID-19.

“None of them is from the South-East. The region has no Almajiri culture. So why bring them to dump in the South-East, contrary to the decision and order of the Northern Governors? Were other zones not rejecting them? Even Nothern Governors were rejecting those not from their own States. So, why pick on the South-East?”, they ask Shettima.

A lawyer, Nnamdi Chukwu, dismissed Shettima as an irritant and a trouble maker whose utterances do not help Nigeria in any way.

Chukwu: “Shettima is an irritant, ignorant of many things. He should be called to order before he does more damage to the unity of the country like he has been doing in the past two years, almost”.