Ohaneze Ndigbo forms political action committee with mandate to secure Igbo presidency

OHANEZE Ndigbo's national executive committee has set up a group to lobby those it describes as critical stakeholders across the country to support plans to get the southeast geo-political zone to produce Nigeria's next president in 2023.

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 Muhammadu Buhari, numerous Igbo groups have argued for the recreation of the defunct republic of Biafra that existed briefly between July 1967 and January 1970.

However, pan-Igbo cultural group Ohaneze Ndigbo is keen to get the campaign back on track, so has created a Political Action Committee to be chaired by its president Professor George Obiozor, with its secretary Okey Emuchay, serving as its scribe. According to Professor Obiozor, the job of the committee was to recognise all the critical stakeholders in the election and persuade them to support an Igbo president for equity, justice, and fairness.

Professor Obiozor said: “This committee is a persuasion team. They will recognise those that are critical in the election from different parts of Nigeria and within our own group because there may be those who are critical here but they don’t want to participate for one reason or the other.

He added that after about 62 years of nationhood, Nigerians need introspective and retrospective thinking. Professor Obiozor, however warned that ethno-regional nationalism is growing astronomically, arguing that it was time to rebuild and restore Nigerian nationalism and the national spirit.