The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has cautioned Yoruba groups, the Odua People Congress (OPC) and Afenifere, against standing in the way of the North in getting what is legitimately due to them in the Tinubu Presidency, insisting that these groups never worked for Ahmed Bola Tinubu to become the President.
In a statement in Kano at the weekend and signed by its spokesperson, Abdulazeez Suleiman, the Coalition reminded these Yoruba groups that Tinubu got a bulk of his votes in the North and would never have been president without the votes from the North.
“While Afenifere, through its leader, Ayo Adebanjo, openly, directly and actively opposed the Tinubu contest, the OPC was completely silent throughout,” he stated.
He added that for any of these groups or their sympathizers to now turn around and assume the right to speak against the North, from where the President-elect extracted the bulk of his winning votes, is the accurate personification of crass opportunism.
He maintained that data from the 2023 Presidential elections showed that Tinubu was able to overcome strong opposition with the help of the North adding that, “Tinubu got more votes from the north-west than from the South-west, his home zone.
“In raw numbers, Tinubu beat Atiku in the north-west, scoring 2,652,824 votes compared to his opponent’s 2,197,824….In fact, Tinubu got 30 per cent of his total votes from the North-west alone. That is almost one-third.
“The entire South-West gave Tinubu 2,542,979, second to the North-west. …Tinubu got a miserable one per cent of his total votes from the South-east with a total of 127,605 votes from the five states and did not score 25 per cent in any of them,” he added.
“If these verifiable figures mean anything to OPC regional jingoists, they should by now understand that the North is only making a legitimate case for appropriate recognition of its efforts,” he stated.
“No one expects that the incoming president will run an administration that will give to the North what it does not deserve, but no one also can deny the North the right to speak for what is legitimately due to it,” he stated.
He stated that no amount of threat or hooliganism will stop northerners such as Abdulaziz Yari, Abbass, Betara, Gagdi, Wase and Jaji from exercising their right to run for the positions of their choice.
He cautioned the incoming President to be wary of how he relates with “proliferated regional jingoist associations like OPC and the Afenifere, lest they drag him into an unnecessary misunderstanding with other sections of the country by pretending to be his kith and kin.”
