FORMER Ogun State governor, Chief Olusegun Osoba, said, yesterday, that an agreement was reached during the merger of the All Progressives Congress, APC, that the presidential candidate of the party for the 2023 presidential election would come from the South.
Speaking when he featured on an ARISE Television’s programme, Osoba, said the agreement was that the North would produce the president in 2015, while the chairman of the party would come from the South. His words: “We had a clear gentlemanly understanding that the Northern part of the country will produce the president when we did the merger in 2013.
And the chairman of the party will then come from the South. “We have had a president for six and a half years now from the North in APC. The president will be there for eight years until 2023. The chairmanship has moved from Chief Bisi Akande in the South-West to John Oyegun from the South-South and then from John Oyegun to Adams Oshiomhole, also from the South-South.
“Of course, at the end of the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari, the gentlemanly arrangement is that the presidency will come to the south and I talk of the south in terms of the two territories that were forced to amalgamate in 1914 which means the south-south, the south-east, and the south-west zones which are also not in the constitution can bid and should be allowed to produce the next president for this country.
“Therefore, those from the South-East, South-South, and South-West can put up candidates for the party’s primary and whoever emerges from the primary can then be the candidate of our party. “That is the gentlemanly understanding that we reached when we were doing the merger arrangement.”
