2023 Presidential Election: I am qualified to contest - Yerima

As the coast is getting more clearer towards the 2023 general election in the country, former Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Ahmad Sani Yerima has declared his interest in contesting the number 1 position in the country under his party, the All Progressives Congress, (APC).

Yerima in a chat with journalists on Sunday confirmed his Presidential ambition saying:

"Yes, I want to confirm to you that by the Special grace of God, if I'm alive, I Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima, intends to vie for Presidential office in the next general election."

He said there is no political document that guides in partisan politics as democracy is only guided by the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

"Well, I don't see any body language as a law or as a document that guides us in politics in politicking. As far as am concerned, democracy is guided by constitution; rule of law.

"It is not personal interest of people, selfish interest of individuals or the projections by other people's statements that will guide our democracy. If you look at all other parts of the world, from America, leader of democracy of the world, citizens are guided by the document called constitution to aspire for any office.

"As far as I am concerned, Nigeria's Constitution of today, my party, APC constitution of today, doesn't bare me from contesting for the Presidential seat, no statement of any group can stop me.

"If tomorrow my party comes up and say we have zoned Presidency to the South, Yerima will follow it. I will now know that it is a decision, legally and lawfully, binding on all members of the party.

"But, so long as the constitution is still saying Nigerian citizens and APC Constitution is saying citizens of Nigeria, I am a citizen of Nigeria and I am going to constest," he said.

On the devaluation of Naira, the Economics and Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN) former senior staff said the nation has faulty fiscal and monetery policies which are detrimental to production.

"We have fiscal and monetary policies that are faulty which are detrimental to production. A situation whereby even toothpick is being imported by businessmen not to talk of rice and others is not healthy for the Naura.

"We should have a robust and fiscal monetary policies and development strategies that will encourage development of agriculture so that we can produce all we need locally and once your production level increases, the demand for foreign import will not be there.

"That is only when you will have the Naira, getting its true value. The value is now being determined by import and export which is not a good economy.

"So, I am sure by the time we have industrial policy that is very good, agriculture policy and we can produce what we need even the clothes we wear, some people will go for local suits. We have very good fabrics that are compared to international ones that we import, we will not have high level import.

"We were exporting before now, cotton to China, America, now we are importing cotton. We were exporting soya beans but now we are importing soya mills to feed our chickens. This kind of thing has to change," he noted.

The Presidential aspirant who supports electronic voting said it reduces high level of rigging during elections saying; "I support electronic voting.

"When we were queueing to register (accredit) without card reader what was happening," he queried, "People were manipulating figures, but by mere introduction of card reader, things changed in that persperctive.

"There is online registration today with your finger prints; the world is changing, Nigeria has to follow. We need to use technology as much as possible. As far as I am concerned one day we will go into electronic voting."

When asked about the recent defection of his state governor, Matawalle to the APC and party leadership, he pointed that he is on the side of equuty and justice.

He maintained that those saying the governor should not defect, should not be deceived as they are not conversant with "our constitution."

According to the former Senator, "a lady asked me two days ago how do we stop defection? I told her we can't.

"It is part of our political history and development and even in America today, people defect because they see where they believe their people are.

"Every Nigerian knows the history of Zamfara. In 1998 when we started APP, PDP AD and so on, APP won election and I became Governor.

"In 2003, ANPP won election and in 2007 ANPP won election again and the Governor defected to PDP and in 2011 we recovered our State. When APC came, Yari became Governor two times. So Zamfara is a traditionally, APC-controlled state.

"The Governor, Matawalle was part of that history. He was in APP in 1998, he contested for local government election.

"Now he decided to come back home; two people; Yari and Kabiru Marafa, will come soon, to join us. We are going to be a family as we were. So, I'm on the side of justice. The justice is that the Governor has come, we have received him and there will be no problem."

He explained that according to the party constitution, the President remains the national party leader while governors are party leaders in their respective states.

"Nobody will allocate leadership. I was Governor in 1999, I left office my Deputy took over and became leader of the party and after him, Yari came and now Matawalle, he is the leader of the party as per APC Constitution.

"The crisis that happened in 2019 election will not happen again because at that time there was no proper primary election and that is the crisis we found ourselves.

"In Zamfara, this is the first time we have such crisis. We had election in 1999, there was no problem, we had election in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015; once you are just and fair to all, you make sure that you allow free and fair election, there will be no problem," he added.