Ohaneze says southeast is all set for presidency in 2023 and expects support from other zones

OHANEZE Ndigbo has declared that Nigeria's southeast geo-political zone is prepared to produce the country's next president come 2023 and will be expecting all the other component parts of the country to support this quest.

Although not constitutional, Nigeria's component parts have a gentleman's agreement that the presidency will rotate between the north and the south of the country. President Muhammadu Buhari's tenure will end in 2023 and being a Fulani northern Muslim, it is expected that the next president will come from southern Nigeria.

Since the return to democracy in 1999, the southwest has produced President Olusegun Obasanjo and the south-south President Goodluck Jonathan, so come 2023, the presidency should automatically go to the southeast. Amid claims that the southeast is being marginalised by the government of President Buhari, numerous Igbo groups have argued for the recreation of the defunct republic of Biafra that existed briefly between July 1967 and January 1970.

With several candidates having already declared for president, Ohaneze Ndigbo president-general Professor George Obiozor, has insisted that the Igbos are ready for 2023. He added that the southwest, south-south, and the north have all produced Nigeria’s presidents and vice presidents since 1999, with only the Igbos left out.

Professor Obiozor said: “Let it be known and clearly understood that Ndigbo were more prepared than the north when President Buhari was elected in 2015. By then Boko Haram had threatened to overrun the north and the nation’s priority then was security and the issue of who will guarantee security, which favoured Buhari, a former head of state and general.

“In the southwest, how prepared were they in 1999 when President Obasanjo was elected? In fact, many people from the southwest did not vote for him in that election as the people of the southwest zone were deep in the crises of Nadeco and displeasure over the June 12, 1993 election annulment.

"That, notwithstanding, the Nigerian nation and the people through the two main national political parties zoned the presidency to the southwest to heal and reconcile the nation over the post-1993 election crisis. Today, if the truth must be told, the imperative of zoning the presidency to the southeast is an idea whose time has come.

"Certainly, Ndigbo are prepared and look forward to it as a national priority. It is also indeed reasonable and logical that before any other zone in the country goes for a second turn of occupying the office of the presidency, that Ndigbo should at least have their first turn.”