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The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) on Wednesday said the most urgent task before its members at the moment was the search for detribalised politicians who are free from moral encumbrances to run for elective offices in order to unite the people and secure the nation.
The organisation also said that nobody could stop the North from fielding and backing candidates for the presidency
CNG said some governors in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) cannot stop the fielding of Northern presidential candidates in the party because of the resolve of the members of the group to resist such an attempt.
Speaking with journalists in Abuja, the Spokesman of CNG, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, maintained that a statement credited to Governor Nyesom Wike, saying, in a veiled reference to some prominent Northern presidential aspirants in the PDP, that made the party lose in 2015, was an indication that he was set to deploy hateful utterances against the North and anything northern instead of pursuing his political aspiration by an issue-based approach.
Suleiman stressed that though some politicians in the North might have been compromised by the perceived anti-Northern elements in the Pro, this would not deter the region from going ahead to field and support a Northern presidential candidate in 2023.
He said, “As the representatives of various interest groups from Northern Nigeria, the CNG is no longer disposed to watching with restraint to the point of condoning and accommodating such unreasonable and unacceptable conduct perpetrated against northern interests by the Wikes and their lackeys.
“For the avoidance of doubt, no amount of blackmail, intimidation, brigandage, gangsterism or rascality by Wike or any other person or group from whichever ever section of the country and in whichever party can stop the North from fielding and backing candidates for the presidency.
“We categorically warn that the plot to use Ortom’s zoning Committee to deprive the North the opportunity to field candidates for the election would not work, as nothing would stop northerners contesting the presidency in all the parties.
“We call the attention of Wike and the gang up against the North to realize and accept the reality that whatever zoning arrangement that might have existed in particularly the PDP, had been jettisoned, discredited, abandoned and utterly destroyed by their own selfish actions in 2011 and 2015.
“In place of any rotation arrangement that has not and would never work, the North is rather focusing on the necessity of searching for an upright, physically healthy, mentally alert, knowledgeable, detribalized leader free of any moral encumbrances.
“We warn Wike and his ilk in the PDP and elsewhere to concentrate on issue-based debates if they have any, as we would certainly not hesitate to expose their past hateful utterances against the North and anything northern.”
