Prince Emmanuel Okotie-Eboh, son of Nigeria’s first Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, and former Regent of Warri Kingdom, has backed the appeal by the Director General of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdul’Aziz Abubakar Yari, urging Northerners to support President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to complete his eight-year tenure.
Okotie-Eboh made his position known while speaking with journalists at a political function in Warri, Delta State, where he commended the APC Campaign Council DG, Yari, for appealing to his fellow Northerners to allow President Tinubu to complete his two-term tenure.
He said the appeal was timely, stressing that agitations by some Northern political leaders for power to return to the North should be discouraged in the interest of equity, fairness, justice and political stability.
According to him, Nigeria’s political leadership has historically operated on an informal understanding that power should rotate among the country’s regions, even though the Constitution does not expressly provide for such zoning arrangements.
He said the North Central zone comprises Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau and the Federal Capital Territory. The North East consists of Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe, while the North West comprises Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara.
Pointing out that in the South, the South East consists of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo; the South South comprises Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo and Rivers; while the South West consists of Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo.
Okotie-Eboh argued that if the presidency were determined strictly on the basis of regional rotation, previous presidents could have handed over power exclusively to their respective regions or ethnic constituencies, undermining the broader principle of national inclusion.
He noted that major political parties and stakeholders across the country have treated the understanding around the rotation of political power as a political gentleman’s agreement, adding that it should not be abandoned when it becomes inconvenient for a particular region.
The former Regent of Warri Kingdom also recalled that former President Muhammadu Buhari served two consecutive four-year terms without major agitation from Northern political leaders demanding that his tenure be shortened to one term to allow power to return elsewhere.
He therefore questioned why, now that a Southerner is in office, some quarters are calling for President Tinubu to serve only one four-year term before power returns to the North. How would it had boen if former president Goodluck Jonathan had insisted it should move to Midwest states or other zones of the South South zones
Speaking further, Okotie-Eboh said that if there must be renewed agitation over the rotation of the presidency, other regions, particularly the South-South, South East and South West, also have legitimate grounds to demand consideration based on the historical distribution of presidential power since independence.
He argued that Nigeria has had periods when the North occupied the presidency for extended periods, stressing that the country should avoid a political arrangement in which one region continually seeks to reclaim power at the expense of the broader principle of fairness and inclusiveness.
Okotie-Eboh appealed to Northerners not to base their demand for the presidency solely on population or regional strength, urging political leaders across the country to respect the existing understanding on power rotation in the interest of national unity, equity and stability.
He said President Tinubu should be allowed to complete his eight-year constitutional tenure if re-elected in 2027, after which other regions would have the opportunity to make their case for the presidency, stressing that respecting political agreements and allowing every region a sense of belonging remain essential to Nigeria’s democratic development.