Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, NEF’s Director of Publicity and Advocacy
The Northern Elders Forum has stated that it will put presidential contenders from different political parties vying for support in the north through a rigorous process until they are persuaded as to who has the ability to turn the country around.
Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, the NEF’s spokesman, announced this on Sunday’s episode of Politics Today, a popular Channels Television program that our correspondent watched.
Baba-Ahmed bemoaned that the northern elders erred greatly in 2015 when they ordered the populace to hand over their bloc votes to President Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) without first asking for his plan.
He said, “We will subject all candidates including Atiku, Tinubu, Obi through a rigorous process and they had better be willing because, believe me, we carry the responsibility on our shoulders to advise people in the north where to go. I am not saying this to impress anybody. We will exercise that responsibility seriously.
“What we promise not to do this time around was not to repeat what we did in 2015 and say ‘Vote for only Sai Baba” where we escort him to the villa but failed to sit him down and ask what he planned to do. It would no longer be about fixing the economy, security and the fight against Boko Haram, They must be specific.
“Buhari got away with it in 2015 and in 2019, we campaigned against him, saying this time he has failed and won’t be given another chance. Today, look at where the country is. We are not going to make that mistake again.”
However, the NEF spokeswoman made it clear that no candidate is subject to a cap.
Any of the candidates, he claimed, would not find the procedure easy.
“At this stage, our options are open. We will not vote on a narrow prism like where (candidates) come from. I speak for the elders’ forum. There was no point we said only northern candidates will be considered. We don’t see the north in isolation. We see ourselves as related to other parts of Nigeria.
“I don’t know what the other parts of the country are doing but the North is not just going to vote for any candidate unless we are convinced that he has done some serious thinking about what he is going to do for this country.
“But we need to know the presidential candidate’s mental health, physical, intellect capacity and his willingness to tap into some of the brightest brains available and his sensitivity to a number of key issues that are vital to our survival as a country,” he stated.
When pointed out that the NEF supported Atiku Abubakar as the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 2015, Baba-Ahmed justified the decision, claiming that Atiku was the only option available at the time.
In response to the question of whether the NEF can persuade the north to support Buhari’s party once more, Baba-Ahmed answered that it depended on Tinubu’s level of conviction.
He said, “If Tinubu is able to convince us about his genuine intention to the North, We will, in turn, tell the people Tinubu is the best candidate, vote for him.
“The truth is that we campaigned against Buhari and told northerners not to vote for him in 2019. That’s because Buhari didn’t do well in his first term. We supported Atiku because it was the only option available then.”
