We REGRET Voting for Buhari – South West leaders lament

We REGRET Voting for Buhari – South West Leaders lament

Amidst perceived anti-Yoruba stance of Muhammadu Buhari, Yoruba leaders are lamenting their political miscalculation. Nigerian Pilot reports that some leaders of Nigeria South West geopolitical region are currently biting their fingers in regret over voting Buhari into office. 

The zone is particularly angry with Buhari, who is the leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), for tolerating the outcome of National Assembly leadership election, which according to them did not favour the Yorubas. 

Buhari’s silence according to them is a serious indication that the region, which queued behind him to ensure victory at the recent polls, may benefit little or nothing from the administration. 

“For the fact that the South West played a key role in the emergence of Buhari as the President, it is expected that they would occupy a more strategic position than the post of vice president”, said one of the leaders. 

They argued that the National Assembly leadership election, which eventually placed the North Central geopolitical zone as a powerful force in the country’s power equation through the emergence of former Kwara governor, Bukola Saraki, as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara from the North-East, has depicted the South- West as not only a weak power bloc in the equation. With the power structure now, the South West as a region has been relegated to the background in the power structure of the country. 

We REGRET Voting for Buhari – South West Leaders lament

Some of the leaders of the region who also participated in the last National Conference argue that since the South West does not hold any substantial position in the current power structure, the region must re-strategise to assert itself in the politics of the nation. 

They further argued that the position of Vice President, which is presently held by a south westerner, does not place the region as a powerful force. 

While referring to one of the speeches made by former President Goodluck Jonathan during the campaigns leading up to the 2015 general elections, National Coordinator of Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reform, CODER, Chief Ayo Opadokun, a South-West leader, who spoke to the Nigerian Pilot Sunday on the current power imbalance, noted that the Yoruba race made a great mistake by not re-electing the former President, considering what he had in stock for the zone. 

He emphasised that the implementation of the National Conference report would elevate the standard of the zone, which is the reason people of the South-West should have queued behind Jonathan. Nigerian Pilot