Former governorship candidate in Imo State and chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress,APC, Uche Nwosu, has berated politicians of southern extraction opposed to Igbo presidency.
Açcording to the politician, southerners clarmouring for rotation of presidency to the region but opposed to South East getting the ticket were unfair to the zone.
Açcording to him,it was double standard to accuse the North of plotting to retain power in 2023, while denying the only zone (Southeast), which has never produced the country’s president, the opportunity to do so.
The only way equity and justice can be truly served,he said,was for other zones in the Southern part of the country to support the South East as power shifts to the region.
“He that comes to equity must come with clean hands. You can’t be agitating for power shift to the South on the guise of equity and justice and when power moves to the South you no longer preach equity and justice, that is simply unfair,”the politician told journalists in Abuja, Wednesday.
Hear him: “When our brothers from the South West or Southeast come out to say they want to be President for equity and justice sake, they are simply not fair, there is no equity or justice in that. The true equity and justice is to make sure that every zone in this country will have the opportunity to rule this country, that is the peace, that is the equity, that is the justice for me.
“The Southeast is determined to get to power by the support of other zones but I still plead with our brothers from other zones to understand that the country is built on three legs, that is the Southeast, South West and the North, even though if you talk about the six geo-political zones we have now, others have tasted it, in the South West, we have Ernest Shonekan, Olusegun Obasanjo, in North Central, we have the likes Abdulsalami Abubakar, Ibrahim Babangida, in the North West, we have the President, Muhammadu Buhari, the North East produced a Vice President, it is only the Southeast that is left.
“When it is done North and South, it is now the turn of the South, when you come to the South, it is the turn of the Southeast and if we have brothers from the South who are are accusing the North of wanting to retain power but when the power shifts to the South, you that have occupied the office is trying to take it again and you are accusing the North, so for me when we talk, we talk with talk with dignity, with principle and with our conscience open. People should come out and do things with conscience and in the way it will please God.
“If you are accusing the North, that the North doesn’t want to release power to the South and you that have tasted power in the South, wants to take power again, you’re not sincere, because if you’re accusing the North that they have done eight years and you that have tasted power in the South wants it, you’re just playing to the gallery, if you’re coming to equity you must come with clean hands.”
He, however,said the South East was not losing any sleep following the emergence of aspirants from other region for the 2023 presidential election.
“We are not discouraged that other zones are interested, this is democracy and you don’t just sit at home and expect them to give power to you, you also have to move and campaign for you to get it, so we know that you can’t sit in the Southeast and power will come from the North, South West or South-South and be given to you”,he said.
He hailed presidential aspirants from the South East for closing ranks and agreeing to work together to actualize the age long aspiration of producing a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction.
“The most important thing is that the Southeast are coming together, few days ago the Presidential aspirants from the Southeast met in Abuja and agreed to work together both those in the APC and the PDP. Before people had thought that it will be impossible for them to come together, but they are coming together. Initially they said if the Southeast can come together, they will support them, they will also that the aspirants coming from the Southeast are many they should select one person, the ones coming out from other zones are they not many , we should stop trying to use cheap blackmail to stop a section of the country from tasting what others have tasted.
“What we need now is a unifier, we want somebody who can come and treat the six geo-political zones as one, we don’t need an ethnic bigot who will come in and the first thing he will do his to face his region, we don’t need that kind of President, we need the president that will look at the entire zones as his own, we need someone who will unite this country as one and we have them in the Southeast, the likes of Owelle Rochas Okorocha, Dave Umahi, Chris Ngige, among others,”he said.
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