2023: APC Should Lift Nigerians Hopes for Good.
That Nigeria has had successful coups and counter coups, fair and near fair elections to the office of president is not an inadmissible fact. Again, one truth that can not be dismissed is that by each successful coup or election, the strength of nationalism drops dashingly. The hopes and enthusiasm raised in mind by citizens plummets with each victory declared. At the risk of sounding sectional or tribal, the victory of an Hausa or Yoruba contestant to the office of president in 2023 will continue to dampen the hopes and aspirations of Nigerians in Nigeria. If a departure from a usual method to solving a problem is a flicker of hope to getting new result, the realization by all Nigerian citizens that we no longer deserve an Hausa president or a Yoruba president but a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction.
With good political party decisions, the presidency has reached four of the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. Among them, two (North East and South East) are still thirsty of power. If the post result of fair play is an absence of agitations leading to tensions, it is deserving for South East and North East of Nigeria to benefit from the same political party decisions which encouraged South West, North Central, North West, and South-South to power.
Nigeria is a marriage of the Northern and Southern protectorates which has been fractured into six political zones. There has been this party constitutional understanding which has it that presidential powers shall be exchanged between the North and South. This arrangement has, since the return to democratic rule in 1999, seen power dangle between the two poles such that by 2023, it should swing to the South to produce a candidate to the office of the president of Nigeria. Being the turn of the South, equity demands that the South East (which is the only zone among the three zones of the South to produce the president) produce the president in 2023 while power returns to the North East by 2031.
Nigeria will definitely not seize to exist if we do the rightful thing as such. The worst will only befall us if we continue to neck deep in selfishness, tribalism and power drunkenness. The Nigeria political elites are not bereft of the knowledge of the right things that will put this country in the right direction but little will one doubt that a good number of them are desperate to have themselves and their croniess call the tunes at the expense of peace and unity of the entire country.
Which among a triplet will be filled with joy if it is not treated and given opportunities as given to its other triun? South East has been patient enough and shouldn’t blame harshly for measures adopted to call the attention of all and sundry to her political ordeal.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has come all out to contravene its constitutional principle of rotating power between the North and South. All Progressive Congress (APC) should take the line of legacy thereby shifting power to the South, even microzone it to the southeast. While PDP is desperate and willing to sacrifice the South that has given her true loyalty since 1999, APC should realize that the South will go for the hand that sings the carrots.
Presidency tilting in the direction of the South at this time is convenient as the South East will present a ready contender who is ripe prepared to lead the country as a president for all zones. Orji Uzor Kalu is a season Nigerian politician whose beyond political life crisscrosses the length and breadth of Nigeria and has won great followership and loyalty among the high and low of Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. He started and has been leading a political social and religious life as a pan Nigerian.
It has become evident that the lingering demand of South Eastern Nigeria is an opportunity to preside over the affairs of the country as president. Since their hopes have been raped by PDP which they gave all against odds, they will not let this opportunity slip their fingers. With a virulent contender as the candidate of APC, more South Eastern and Southern states will flip from PDP because this is the first time a ruling party is giving South East to go-ahead to produce a president.
Izuoma Ibe Writes from FCT, Abuja, Nigeria via izuomaibe@gmail.com
