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Geoffrey Anyanwu, Enugu
The South-East Integrity Group of the All Progressive Congress (APC) has berated the National Coordinator of Tinubu-Not-Negotiable 2023, Muri Okunola for denigrating the geopolitical zone.
Okunola was quoted in an interview published in the online version of a newspaper, (not the Sun) as saying that APC would lose the 2023 presidential election if the Igbo get the presidential ticket.
But reacting to the statement yesterday in Enugu, APC chieftain and convener of South-East Integrity Group, Dr. Chinedu Ogbuagu, described it as ridiculous and absurd, stating that such claim was inconsistent with the group’s belief in national unity.
In the said interview, Okunola had said: “The only reason Nigeria is still together is power rotation. Power rotation is sacrosanct for unity of Nigeria.”
Fuming, Ogbuagu queried: “Did anyone contemplated that power must rotate to Tinubu? Power rotation is intended to be between North and South. Granted, Tinubu is from the South to which power must rotate to, having resided in the North from 2015 to 2023. But is Tinubu not from the same southern geo-political zone that produced President Obasanjo (1999 to 2007) and Vice President Osinbajo (2015 to 2023).”
Noting that each time the South had produced the President, they did so with the massive support of the South-East, despite the fact it was the only zone that has neither produced the President nor Vice-President. Ogbuagu attributed Okunola’s stance to “greed and insensitivity” for personalizing Nigeria’s presidency to the ambition of one man.
He said, “Every selfless and patriotic Nigerian knows that presidential power must not only rotate to the South in 2023, but should also be zoned to the South-East geo-political zone that has not produced a president, not even vice president since 1999. As APC members, we of the South-East Integrity Group obviously want a South-East APC member to become that president.”
Dismissing what he called “self-serving and distorted political and electoral calculations” of groups like TNN 2023, Ogbuagu said that to the contrary, South-East voters remain the largest, though latent voting bloc spread across all states of the federation.
He further said, “Without President Buhari’s 12 million vote bank as a starting point, our dear party APC will need to unearth and mobilize the millions of latent Igbo votes spread across the country.
“Okunola and those who share his jaundiced narrative should take a cue from the historic swearing in of Governor Hope Uzodimma as an APC governor on January 15, 2020, exactly 50 years after the end of the Biafra War as an indication that the hand of God is in a South Easterner becoming the flagbearer and winning the presidency for our great party in 2023.
