Laolu Akande, a former Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), has said the southern presidency will last for eight years before power returns to the north.

Addressing newsmen on Sunday, Akande dismissed those clamouring for power to return to the north as politicians merely making noise.

He revealed there is a national consensus around the idea of a rotational presidency between the south and the north.

“Anybody trying to reverse that is just joking. It’s not going to work,” he said.

On political mergers, Akande stated that such moves will not solve Nigeria’s problems.

Recalling how a merger in 2014 gave birth to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), he said nine years later, Nigeria’s problems still persist because the core issues remain unaddressed.

“So, all of these mergers, even if they (proponents) succeed, what is going to happen is that they will just change the characters of people in the Government House.

“We need to understand that there are fundamental problems that have to be sorted out, and we cannot leave it to politicians,” he said.

He urged Nigerians to centre discussions around national consensus, rule of law, poverty, restructuring, and the constitution before the 2027 elections.

“We need to agree that regardless of political parties, regardless of our ethnic differences, regardless of our political differences, all of us agree that this is the minimum that anybody who is running Nigeria or running the state government has to get,” he added.