Akeredolu: No problem if Obi wins in 2023 — as long as presidency comes to south

Rotimi Akeredolu, governor of Ondo, says he won’t have any objection if Peter Obi, presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), wins the 2023 election.

Akeredolu spoke on Wednesday in an interview on Channels Television.

Akeredolu is a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Bola Tinubu, former Lagos governor, is the presidential candidate of the party.

Tinubu and Obi are both from the southern region of the country.

On numerous occasions, Akeredolu has insisted that the presidency must go to the south, since President Muhammadu Buhari, whose tenure will be completed in 2023, is from the north.

Asked if he would have supported a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket if he was in the opposition party, the Ondo governor said religion should not be an issue in the 2023 elections.

“I would have said the same thing. If you had listened to my lecture today, I was very clear. I said that religion is not the issue now,” he said.

“We have other issues that should be on the front burner today in this country — issue of restructuring, issue of rotational presidency, among others.

“I said, ‘look, since 1999, there is an understanding that we will move from north to south — rotate the presidency’. And if today, we have people who want to deploy what I call manipulation of our people on religious basis to think that they can change this (call for southern presidency), then we should not accept it.

“For me, it is not because of asiwaju Bola Tinubu. If you listened to my lecture, I said if Obi is elected as president, for me, that will be all right. If Bola Tinubu is elected, that will be all right. For me, it must come to the south; that is the position.”