As the 2023 presidential election gathers momentum, the Coalition of South/East Youth Leaders (COSEYL) has said that any attempts by the two major political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to zone its presidential ticket to other regions would result in the declaration of Biafra.
The Coalition in a statement issued on Thursday by its President-General, Goodluck Ibem alleged that PDP, APC and other political parties have concluded plans to zone tickets to the North.
While agitating for Igbo Presidency in 2023, the apex socio-political Igbo youth group argued that regions in the South also have all the rights to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in the forthcoming general elections.
The statement read, “It is unconstitutional, a treasonable offence and a defiant suspension of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for anyone to throw away the rotation of the office of the President between the North and South as encapsulated in the federal character principle in the Nigerian constitution.
“When a particular section of the country is excluded from governance and other political positions, it means automatically that they have been told in plain language that they are no longer part of the country which is invariably a declaration of another country in a country.
“We want our brothers from the North to know that the South is not begging for the position of the President of Nigeria, but it is our constitutional rights to produce the Nigerian president come 2023.
“The same way the Nigerian government explores the oil deposits in the South as a property of the federal government, so also it is the right of Nigerians from the South to produce the president of Nigeria come 2023,” the statement said. (Daily Independent)
