A presidential aspirant on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC) Moses Ayom said the move to deny the Middle Belt region opportunity to produce the 2023 presidential candidate of the APC was responsible for the crisis rocking the party.
Ayom, an advocate of Middle Belt Presidency, also asked a national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to withdraw from the race and support a middle Belter to emerge.
Ayom spoke on ARISE TV programme monitored in Abuja.
The APC chieftain noted that unless the injustice, lack of fairness and other unfavorable tendencies meted out to the Middle Belt are redressed, the ruling party and even the country as a whole will not be okay.
He therefore charged President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Tinubu and other well meaning Nigerians to work for the actualization of the Middle Belt Presidency in 2023 for a better Nigeria.
Ayom said there was the need for all stakeholders especially in the ruling party to embrace equity, fairness and justice as a panacea for resolving the lingering security and sociopolitical crisis in the APC and Nigeria as a whole.
He said the desperation by some powerful political forces to corner the Presidency at the expense of the Middle Belt showed the continuous political discrimination against the region since the return of democracy in 1999.
According to him, “All cases of insecurity (banditry, terrorism, kidnapping, armed robberies) and the crisis of poverty that Nigeria faces as well as the political turmoil in the major political parties are the results of decades of extreme injustice and the flagrant display of unfairness perpetrated against the Middle Belt region.
“A total reversal is the only solution especially now that there is an opportunity in 2023 to do so.”
He also explained that societies that embrace injustice and all sorts of practices that negate equity and fairness would always be engulfed in crisis.
The presidential hopeful said, “Nigeria has the opportunity to correct the injustices meted out to the people of the Middle Belt. The Middle Belt is the thread that knits Nigeria together. Now is the time to make us feel integral in the affairs of our fatherland.
“The impression is being created that political power at the highest echelon is a ping pong game between the far north and the south while the middle belt is a mere net to be used in scoring points.
“Now is the time to be assured that we are equal stakeholders and not second or third rate citizens in Nigeria. It is time for Nigerians to join hands in the fight for equity, fairness and justice and support the Middle Belt to produce the next president,” he said.
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