Laolu Akande, former Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, has asserted that Nigeria’s rotational presidency is now a deeply entrenched practice.
Speaking to journalists on Sunday in Lagos, Akande dismissed the possibility of reversing the current political arrangement, particularly efforts to end the Southern presidency before its full term concludes in 2027.
“I think it is just a child’s play (terminating southern presidency in 2027. Nigeria has gone past that.
“The South is going to get its eight years. The North will get the next eight years.
“Politicians are just going to make noise. it is not going to be possible, really (to terminate southern term).
“Rotational presidency has come to stay in Nigeria. There is a national consensus around the idea of a rotational presidency between the South and the North.
“Anybody trying to reverse that is just joking , It’s not going to work,” he said.
Addressing discussions of opposition parties forming coalitions ahead of the 2027 elections, Akande expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of political mergers in resolving Nigeria’s challenges.
Instead, he urged Nigerians to focus on addressing systemic issues such as poverty, corruption, and governance reforms.
He said: “All of these political mergers are not going to solve the problems of Nigeria.
“In 2014, there was a merger that led to APC. There was a lot of expectations in this country. APC carried the national wave. Nine years after, where are we?
“We are nowhere different from where we were then because the core issues have been left unaddressed.
“So all of these mergers, even if they (proponents) succeed, what is going to happen is that they will just change the characters of people in the Government House.
“We need to understand that there are fundamental problems that have to be sorted out, and we cannot leave it to politicians,” he said.
“That’s why you hear the noise of mergers all over the place. It is just going to be a repeat of what happened with APC. We must rather unite as Nigerians to deal with core issues,” he said.
“We need to agree that regardless of political parties, regardless of our ethnic differences, regardless of our political differences, all of us agree that this is the minimum that anybody who is running Nigeria or running the state government has to get.
“People that are outside of the political process must rise up and begin to call for this kind of concerted efforts where we develop a national consensus across party lines, across regional lines, across ethnic lines, across religious lines.
“I’m not excited about this merger, it is not going to make a dent on the problem,” he said.
