Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River on Monday in Abuja, said he would be Nigeria’s next president given his pedigree and the support enjoyed from Nigerians and urged political parties to zone their presidential tickets to the South.

Mr Ayade disclosed this when a concerned group of persons known as sons and daughters of Cross River, presented him the All Progressives Congress (APC) nomination form to contest the party’s presidential primary election.

The governor, who assured that he would tackle the problem of poor electricity supply head-on, said that he was ready to deploy a workable solution to fix the problem once and for all.

On whether or not he stood the chance of emerging as the party’s choice being a southerner, Mr Ayade assured that the leadership of the APC would find a lasting solution to the issue.

He explained that the inheritance of democracy as a practice in Nigeria and other African countries without customising the ethnic sensitivity and diversity of the people had become a critical issue.

“As other democracies deal with population and numbers, which is the supremacy of numbers over the minority, democracy as an instrument for egalitarian distribution, equity, fair sharing and equal access to power is a subject for discussion,” said the Cross River governor. “So, if power by the nomenclature of democracy supposes that people will have fair and equal access, one will imagine that by the extension of that definition, power should go to the southern part of Nigeria having done eight years this way.”

He noted that one way to guarantee unity in Nigeria is to let a southerner become the next president.

“Hopefully it has to be a southern candidate. That is one of the major ways of guaranteeing the unity of this country. If we rely on the muscle of numbers then it becomes the situation where power belongs to the man with the greatest fist,” explained Mr Ayade.

Explaining his ‘Afropolitan theory’, the basis for the word ‘afrotionism’, he said it derived its meaning from the need to offer one’s shoulder for others to lean on.

According to him, irrespective of the population disbalance in Nigeria, what is fair is fair. He said if it was the turn of the South, power should be allowed to go there.

On his chances given the number of presidential aspirants in APC, Mr Ayade said he was optimistic.

On security, the governor said the security situation could have been worse but for President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership and pointed out that the collapse of Afghanistan and the equipping of ISIS to take over West Africa, had put the subregion, particularly Nigeria, under threat over the years.

According to him, the aim of the infiltration is to get the “economic soul” of African countries, particularly those with huge resources like Nigeria, Congo, among others.

Mr Ayade promised to tackle insecurity with modern and more strategic measures like the use of technology.

(NAN)