Forget North or South, Choose the Best Leader, Says Baba-Ahmed
National Chairman of the Peoples Redemption Party, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has urged Nigerians to set aside regional sentiment in choosing leaders and to back candidates with competence, integrity and vision, declaring himself fully comfortable as a northerner supporting a southern presidential candidate.
Baba-Ahmed made the call while featuring in the News Agency of Nigeria Personality Interview Series on Tuesday in Abuja. He spoke against the backdrop of the emergence of former Cross River governor Donald Duke as the party’s candidate for the 2027 general elections.
The PRP chairman said the party deliberately rejected the politics of zoning and regional entitlement, arguing that Nigeria’s persistent challenges demand capable hands rather than candidates chosen on the basis of origin. “As a northerner, I am completely comfortable supporting Donald Duke because he is the best candidate available to us, not because he comes from the South,” he said.
He maintained that Nigerians must learn from past experiences and stop making leadership choices based on ethnic, religious or regional sentiment. “We have reached a point where the country should ask who can solve our problems, not where the person comes from,” he said. “The problems confronting Nigerians today are not northern or southern issues. Poverty, insecurity and unemployment affect every part of the country.”
Baba-Ahmed disclosed that all three aspirants who contested the PRP presidential ticket were from the southern part of the country, stressing that no northern aspirant took part in the race. Duke secured the ticket after scoring the highest votes at the primary election, sweeping the polls with 6,499 votes, while his closest rival, Kingsley Yakubu, who ran a nationwide campaign focusing on youth inclusion and economic reform, scored 2,699 votes. Dr Nnaoke Ufere, an academic and policy expert, came third with 784 votes.
He said party members chose Duke through what he described as a transparent electoral process because they believed he possessed the leadership qualities needed to govern the country.
The chairman criticised what he called the growing tendency among politicians to exploit ethnic and regional divisions for political advantage, saying such practices had weakened national cohesion and distracted attention from governance. According to him, Nigeria’s future depends on its ability to embrace merit-based leadership and build a political culture that rewards competence and performance.
He said the PRP would continue to promote issue-based politics and encourage Nigerians to evaluate candidates on their records, character and capacity to deliver good governance. Baba-Ahmed expressed confidence that Duke’s candidacy would appeal to voters across regional, ethnic and religious divides, adding that the country needed leaders capable of uniting citizens around a common vision of peace, security and prosperity.
(NAN)