By Cajetan Mmuta, Awka
Former member representing Ogbaru federal constituency, Anambra State, in the House of Representatives, Victor Ogene, has condemned his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) for ‘leaving out’ the South-East in the zoning of positions for 2023 elections.
Ogene called on Igbo leaders across the political divide to urgently convene a summit of Ndigbo, to see a way around the issue.
According to him, this is to ensure that Igbo people are not schemed out of political arrangements in the next eight years.
Ogene, in a statement to newsmen, said: “The Igbo people spent the eight years of the current APC-led Federal Government lamenting their near obliteration from the country’s power calculus and it is gradually coming to an end, yet there is neither an indication that the situation would be redressed, nor is there a concerted attempt by Ndigbo to avert a repeat of the status quo.”
He said, “It was particularly irksome that in the clamour for the rotation of the presidential stool to the South, APC leaders appear to have deliberately refrained from specifically zoning the position to the South-East, in the spirit of equity, fairness, good conscience and precedent.
“For those who are wont to hide under a finger, by citing the less than admirable acceptance of the party in the region, providence and precedent offers a simple answer: there once was a president who emerged, in spite of electoral rejection by his ward, local government, state and region.
He stated that, “Now that Ndigbo find themselves in a similar situation, why would the rules of engagement change suddenly? Are the power brokers, who despite everything else, resolved the 1999 quagmire in favour of the preservation of national unity no longer alive to apply the same balm of inclusivity in order to accommodate Ndigbo?”
Ogene stated further that: “Speaking realistically, once the position is zoned to the South, and a candidate emerges from either the South-West or South-South, that forecloses the possibility of getting a Vice Presidential slot for Ndigbo. And in the event that the party triumphs in the 2023 election, its exclusion from the power loop would be stretched by another eight years.”
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“This, therefore, is a wake-up call on all Igbo leaders of note to gird their loins and seek negotiations and accommodation for the greater political interest of the South-East,” he said.
