A political pressure group under the aegis of the South-East APC Integrity Group, on Monday, backed a call by the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai that Nigeria’s president must come from Southern Nigeria in 2023.

Convener of the group, Dr Chinedu Jideofo-Ogbuagu who addressed journalists in Enugu, said that Governor El-Rufai, being a reasonable and morally upright man, knows that rotation of presidential power between South and North has become an established convention since 1999, and as such, after President Buhari has served out the North’s turn from 2015 to 2023, it must be the turn of the South to produce president from 29th May 2023.

The group further stated that presidential power must not only shift to the South in 2023 but must be zoned to the South-East. “That is because on the two previous occasions since 1999 that presidential power rotated to the South, South-West (President Olusegun Obasanjo) and South-South (President Goodluck Jonathan) took the South’s turns, both supported heavily by the South-East.

It noted that South-East must not only produce president of Nigeria in 2023 but, it want South-Easterner to become president of Nigeria on APC platform, adding that PDP have exhausted its goodwill in the South-East in particular and the South in general.

The group stated that as a strategic, advocacy and pressure group within APC, it has been has strategizing and pushing for sanitization, popularity and rapid growth of APC in the South-East.

“In good time before 2023, we wants South-East to have more APC card-carrying members than any other geopolitical zone in Nigeria. And with the massive support of the other five geopolitical zones, a South-Easterner will become president of Nigeria in 2023, thereby ensuring justice, peace and continued oneness of Nigeria.

“With a South-Easterner as president of Nigeria from 29th May 2023, we also foresee outstanding governance of Nigeria and prosperity’s the state for all Nigerians,” it declared.