He said the region had yet to do so since the return of democratic governance to the country in 1999.
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Anthony Adefuye, has said it is the turn of the South-West to produce the President of Nigeria in 2023.
He said the region had yet to do so since the return of democratic governance to the country in 1999.
According to INDEPENDENT, Adefuye said those clamouring for the presidency to go to the South-East were wrong as the region produced former President Olusegun Obasanjo who was in power from 1999 to 2007.
The APC chieftain alleged that Obasanjo is an Igbo man and that his father hailed from Anambra State while his mother was a Yoruba woman.
He said, “I believe that in 2023, the APC will zone the Presidential ticket to the South. When it comes to the South, then it will be narrowed down to the South-West because that is the only region that has not produced the President since 1999. It has always been (between) the North and the Igbo.
“Some people may argue that what about Obasanjo? Obasanjo is not a Yoruba man. He is an Igbo man from the South-East. His father was from Anambra while his mother was a Yoruba woman. And that was why during his tenure, he completely ignored the South-West. For example, throughout his eight years, he did nothing on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
“But he did a lot for his people in the South-East. He picked five ministers from there and even appointed the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from Anambra, where his father came from.
“So, it is right for the South-West to demand for the Presidency in 2023. What we should be doing now is to work towards 2023 to ensure that the Presidency comes to the South-West. The South-West has never produced the President before.”
However, the National Publicity Secretary of the apex Yoruba Socio-Cultural Organization, Afenifere, Yinka Odumakin, has dismissed speculations that the former President was not a Yoruba man.
He also criticised Yoruba sons whom he accused of trying to join others to denigrate the heritage of the former President in a bid to advance their political interests.
According to Punch, the Afenifere spokesman was responding to claims by a former Lagos Senator, Anthony Adefuye, that the former Nigerian leader was an Igbo man born by a Yoruba woman.
Odumakin noted that it was absurd for anyone to seek to deny the Yoruba ancestry of the former President.
Odumakin said, “That was a twisted and perverted logic. The South-West produced Nigeria’s president in the person of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo for eight years 1999-2007. If anyone wants to be President, he should go ahead but not use the name of the highly sophisticated Yoruba race to push through a perverted logic to try to sell his candidacy. Chief Obasanjo is a Yoruba man.”