The President of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF), Alhaji Shettima Usman Yerima has avowed that the Presidency is the north's birthright till 2023.
Yerima made the declaration in a recent interview with the Vanguard Newspaper.
In the interview, Yerima declared that the ailing President Muhammadu Buhari will be replaced in 2019.
He, however, warns against Nigeria falling into another constitutional crisis that could lead to the Doctrine of Necessity that ushered in the administration of Goodluck Jonathan, then vice president and a southerner, after his principal, President Umaru Yar’Adua, a northerner, took gravely ill.
Yerima said;
"On that, I am neither here nor there because unfolding events in Nigeria today give room for concern. Over and over, we have proved to be good in hoping. And every problem of yesterday becomes small compared to what happens today. It has been a case of our yesterday being better than our today. And the problems, rather than decreasing, are regrettably increasing. And if care is not taken, we are going to run into constitutional crisis of an unimaginable proportion and can be worse than the one we encountered during the Yar’Adua regime."
"The acting president has limitations. And Mr. President, who is our collective property, we don’t know the situation of things with him. No matter how anybody wants to keep his situation under secrecy, it doesn’t work that way because it is our right to know what happens to him. "
"What is being spent to keep him abroad is tax payers’ money. The money belongs to Nigerians. And it is their right to know exactly the state of his health. One time you hear Lai Mohammed saying one thing. Another time you hear Femi Adesina saying another thing while someone else later is saying a different thing and all of them are working with the same establishment! It gives room for a lot of concern. Our prayer is his safe return. But we have to know what is happening because we cannot fold our arms till we run into another constitutional crisis and start to look for another Doctrine of Necessity."
"We, northerners, need to put people in the right places with a view to finding answers to our problems. We need to have a smooth transition to 2019 and then 2023. The North is unstoppable for now and we cannot afford to take any chances."
Read the details of the interview from Vanguard Newspaper