The Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, Sunday blamed the media for reporting that the North wanted power returned to it as its birthright.
The National Publicity Secretary of the forum, Mr. Anthony Sani, who said this while speaking with newsmen in Kaduna, said the North, like other regions, would contest the presidency in 2015.
Sani said that there was nothing wrong with the statement credited to Aliyu that the region was ready to negotiate the 2015 poll.
The ACF spokesman said that the zoning formula had been killed and buried by the 2011 elections.
Sani stated, “I think Governor Aliyu Babangida is not wrong precisely because politics of zoning has been killed and buried by the results of elections in 2011 when Nigerians voted against politics of zoning.
“Where that is the case, the North will be expected to canvass for the presidency like any other sections of the country. In that case, there is nothing like North insisting on the presidency, but it will be left for dynamics of democracy to determine.”
The ACF’s spokesman said the South used annulment of June 12, 1993 election to morally blackmail the North into accepting zoning.
He stated, “When the time came for the turn of the North, then suddenly constitutionalism and politics of merit supplanted zoning. What is more? Nigerians voted against politics of zoning in 2011.
“As democrats, ACF and northern leaders accepted the judgment of Nigerians in accordance with democratic tenets which demand that majority has its say and way while minority only has its say.
“In proper democracy premised on triple foundation of liberty, justice and common decency, there cannot be insistence” He said.
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