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Buba Galadima: I can vote for a Southerner, if…

Prominent businessman and politician, Buba Galadima, has said that he can and will vote for a southerner to be the president of Nigeria if such a person shares the same ideology, vision or opinion as he would want, even as he said that an Igbo man will have his support to be the president of Nigeria, as the South East does not lack a suitable presidential candidate.

 

The former ally of President Muhammadu Buhari said this when he appeared as a guest on Arise News Good Morning Show monitored in Lagos during the week. He said: “I can vote for any southerner any day, if that person has the kind of views or opinion, or foresight or vision as I would want.

 

After all, there is a president who comes from the Northern part of the country and who is supposed to be a Muslim like myself. I ask what he has done for Northerners or my religion, having been one.

 

“If anyone can provide me security, build roads, give me economic prosperity, take my children to school, provide health care, why do I have to look for another Abubakar or Mohammed or whatsoever?

 

The issue is good governance. Let us all come together and address the issue of good governance. Let us put forward whoever will do those things we have designed to make Nigeria look like in the four years that he will be in power.” Also, he said that as Nigerians, we must agree on what we want, what we want Nigeria to look like.

 

We must work for Nigeria, not for tribe, not for religion, not for ethnicity and not where someone comes from. On zoning of the presidency to the South East in 2023, Galadima, who led others to form N-All Progressives Congress (NAPC), said there will be no end to agitations and clamour for zoning. If care is not taken, people may take zoning to a level of wards in a state.

 

Rather, he said that political parties should adopt it as a matter of strategy.

 

He said: “Let political parties do it as a matter of strategy. I have a lot of friends from the South East – Orji Uzo Kalu, Governor (Peter) Obi, (Ike) Ekweremadu, Rochas Okorocha, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu and several other prominent Nigerians from that region.

 

I can vote for any of them if he presents himself and carries the people along with him. “But I do not agree to the president from the South East; I do not agree to the Igbo presidency because it is suspect. That is why I tell my Igbo friends, please remove that language from your dictionary.

 

There is nothing like an Igbo presidency. There can be an Igbo man that I can whole heartedly support and fight for to become the president of Nigeria. But once you tribalise it, every Nigerian will think he is going to be president for only Igbo or for South East alone.

 

He has to be the president for Nigeria. “Have you not seen the philanthropic gestures of Orji Uzo Kalu, Rochas Okorocha in other parts of Nigeria? Does that not qualify them to be president of Nigeria?”

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