Arewa Joint Committee organizers of the Arewa House Interactive session going on in Kaduna have said that North has no consensus candidate for the 2023 general election.
Newsonline reports that Arewa added that Northern leaders have no plan of endorsing any presidential candidate including the six presidential candidates invited for the Arewa House Interactive session.
The Arewa Joint Committee which is made up of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation (SABMF), Jamiyyar Matan Arewa (JMA), Arewa House (Center for Historical Development and Research) and Arewa Research Development Project (ARDP), had been accused of planning to endorse one of the top three candidates in the 2023 election.
In a press conference in Kaduna on Tuesday, the chairman of the steering committee, Mallam Murtala Aliyu, clarified that the interactive session was not aimed at endorsing any presidential candidate but to give all the six invited candidates a room to showcase their plans and blueprint to the people of North.
Mallam Murtala added that at no time has the Arewa Joint Committee planned to endorse any candidate but they shall put the interactive session in readable form to help Northerners make right decisions at the poll.
READ ALSO: 2023 Election: INEC Warns PDP, APC, Against Attacks On Oppositions
Murtala said, “These interactions in themselves were not planned with the goal of endorsing a candidate. They are part of a longer process that plans to generate commitments to address the challenges of the North by candidates, and which covers a substantial part of the campaigning period.
“We plan to extract and publish these commitments so that Nigerians may measure and evaluate candidates against them. Our goal is to afford citizens an opportunity to match candidates against their commitments to matters that are central to the interests of the North.”
He added that “Until the elections in February, 2023 the North will be challenged to raise its vigilance over all electoral activities. It is vital that we prioritize evidence of competence, integrity, quality of preparation and commitment to address the challenges of the North among candidates.
“We will continue to invite attention of the government to the security of the electoral process, and in particular the vulnerability of many parts of the North to organized crime which may pose a serious threat to their right to participate in electing the next sect of leaders in 2023.”
“The need to show restraint and discipline as politicians canvass for our elections has never been more pressing. The entire Nation must be open to all contestants and free from violence.
“The exploitation of ethnic and religious fault lines is extremely dangerous, and the nation is already showing signs of stress owing to this exploitation,” he added.
According to Murtala, six of the presidential candidates, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso of the NNPP, Kola Abiola of the PRP, Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Prince Adebayo Adewale of the SDP were invited, adding that all except presidential candidate of the NNPP honoured the invitation.
