North waiting for parties to present their presidential candidates—Yakassai
Leading and vociferous elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai has made it clear that contrary to all ongoing alignments and realignments ahead of 2019 presidential elections, the generality of the North is yet to have a candidate to support either former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar or any other.
In an interview, he said Nigerians had made mistakes in the past, from former President Olusegun Obasanjo to President Muhammadu Buhari, by voting for personalities and not for the quality of programmes offered by the candidates.
According to him, “As elders in the north, we know that all individuals contesting will run under a certain political party, as stated by the constitution and we have no candidate yet. We are waiting for the political parties to produce their candidates through the process provided for by the constitution. Then we will compare the qualities and programmes of the candidates.
“We will not support anyone, except based on the quality of programmes which he has to offer to Nigerians. In the past, we have been working in elections based on personalities, right from Obasanjo to Buhari. They were voted on the basis of their personalities, not their programmes, and they did nothing to Nigeria. They didn’t move Nigeria forward.
“So, we are waiting to see who and who the parties have to present to us. The criteria we will look out for in any presidential candidate are five; capacity, competence, vision, ability to plan and integrity to do what you promised to do; not to deceive people,” Yakassai averred.
