Kaduna — Socialist Front (SF), a Northern-based pressure group has said it is opposed to power shift to the North. The SF vows to frustrate any attempt by the northern political elite to actualise the agitation for power shift in 2007.

The group said that the South South should be given the slot to ensure peace, justice, fairness and equity in the country.

Reacting to the stand taken by the Northern Senators Forum and the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) that power shifts to the North in 2007, the leader of the SF and spokesman of the civil society community in the North, Mallam Shehu Sani maintained that the so-called gentleman agreement on power shift in 1999 was not binding on all in the country.

The Northern Senators' Forum had at their meeting at the weekend in Minna, Niger State insisted that the gentleman agreement on power shift to the North be respected in 2007.

At a press briefing weekend in Kaduna, Mallam Sani said, the gentleman agreement reached in 1998 between the political elite desirous of taking over power in 1999 was not binding on all Nigerians because there was no referendum that was conducted shift from the South to the North or from the North to the South.

" Even if there was a gentleman agreement between a group of elite at that very time, a lot of water has passed under the bridge and it is an incontrovertible fact that in all the zones in Nigeria, the South South has been denied, and it is only an act of appreciation from the people of the North to support the South Soth to produce not only a president but a credible candidate that will be a president; that will give this country a sense of direction," he said.

"The masses of the North will not be blinded by sectional sentiment and desperation for power by the political elite. The experience of the common people in the northern part of Nigeria for over three decades was that this same political elite that have been angling for power got power and wasted it" the pro democracy and human right activist stated.

He further argued that the northern political elite is yet to account to the pauperised masses of the North having been in power for over three decades.

"So for a group of people who were desperate on seizing political power from the military to sit down in a comfortable hall in Nicon Noga or Sheraton or any five-star hotel in Abuja to decide how they are going to shift power from one region to another, we do not believe that such argument holds water; and we are also making it categorically clear that we will oppose any attempt by any individual or group to whip up sectional sentiment to support a discredited candidate or aspirant that will be pushed as a front, as a presentation of the northern political position," Sani affirmed.

He described Northern Senators' position as a calculated attempt to back the presidential ambition of the erstwhile military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (rtd).

He said any Northerner who aspire to be president in 2007 must have a clear agenda on what he has on the ground for the desertification in the North, the dredging of River Niger or exploration of oil in Lake Chad and Benue and Bauchi, the educational development in northern part of Nigeria, etc.