Amaechi backs Fashola on 2023 presidential election

Transportation minister Rotimi Amaechi says he agrees with Babatunde Fashola on which Nigerian zone should produce President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor.

Fashola, who heads the ministry of works and housing, had urged the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to return presidential power to the country’s south as agreed.

“The truth is that what makes an agreement spectacular is the honour in which it is made not whether it is written,” Fashola told the media.

He made the comment after reportedly learning that some APC voices want to retain power in the north.

In Nigeria, the presidency is rotated between the predominantly Muslim north and the mostly Christian south. The current president, Buhari, is a northern Muslim who is expected to leave office when his second tenure expires in 2023.

Amaechi said he agreed with Fashola that someone from the south should become president in 2023.

He, however, would not say whether or not the president should come from the South-East.

“It is a difficult question for me to respond to,” Amaechi said when Channels TV asked him about the South-East on Sunday.

“I just believe that the zoning which was done in the North and South should be respected, just like Fashola said.”

Amaechi, who is a former governor of Rivers, a state in the South-South, also said it was “a bit too early” to have conversations about contesting for president either in 2023 or afterwards.

“The best conversation to have now is how to deliver on the railway, maritime as it pertains to the responsibility assigned to me by the president,” Amaechi said.