Northerner can succeed Buhari in 2023 – Bakare

Tunde Bakare, senior pastor of the Citadel Global Community Church has said there was nothing wrong in a Northerner succeeding incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.

Bakare said competence rather than zoning should decide who rules the country.

The pastor cum politician spoke in an interview on Channels Television, on Tuesday, noting that zoning was unconstitutional.

There have been increased agitations from Southern leaders that the presidency should be zoned to the region in 2023 when the tenure of President Buhari expires. Leaders in the Southeast say they would not vote for any political party that do not present presidential candidate from the region.

But Bakare said: “Let the best of the best emerge… it doesn’t matter which part of the country the person comes from. I have heard all kinds of arguments on rotation and zoning.

“Some are saying Obasanjo, plus Goodluck Jonathan, that’s 14 years and Umaru Yar’Adua plus Buhari is 10 years and that the North still has four more years. At this moment, what is needed is a person who can do it”.

The former vice-presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the 2011 general elections bemoaned the state of Nigeria, saying it was not the Nigeria he had envisioned.

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Bakare noted that Nigeria was at the precipice and many things currently happening in the country have not been seen before, stressing that Nigeria has a way of bouncing back.

“This is not the Nigeria we envisioned as young people. It is as if we are again at the precipice but Nigeria has a way of bouncing back; we are full of hope that God Almighty will help us. We are in a very perplexing situation as a nation.

“Many things that we didn’t see before are happening now. Even the president himself said so that nothing worries or bothers him like what is happening in the Northeast, especially the banditry and kidnapping,” Bakare added.

When asked if Buhari’s administration is a failure, Bakare said there is “gross failure” in the administration and that it is possible to fail forward in order to resolve the country’s problems.

According to him, “I like to use my own words. Failure will look, ‘like try again’; you can still do something with it. I once failed an examination in mathematics.