Peter Obi: Ohanaeze Urges S/East Governors To Ensure Election Holds, Condemns Plots Against Igbo Presidency

The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide has reaffirmed its earlier stand that it is the turn of the Southeast to produce the next president of Nigeria.

Ohanaeze, in a statement issued by its national publicity secretary, Dr Alex Chiedozie Ogbonnia, said although the pan-Igbo group was non-partisan, it would not ‘shy away from national politics, especially as it affects the interest of our people’.

Ogbonnia stated that, “Ohanaeze insists that going by the political culture of sharing, zoning and rotation of power which have been in existence since Nigeria came into existence, it is the turn of the Southeast to produce a president for Nigeria in 2023.”

The publicity secretary alleged that some interests in the country have adopted various plots to truncate the emergence of a southeasterner as president, adding that, “Ohanaeze Ndigbo watched with keen interest, sadness and reproach the bourgeois cash and carry politics, conspiracy, cold intrigues, betrayals, hypocrisy, opportunism and other forms of machinations within the mainstream political parties, against the Southeast, even from the least expected.”

The group canvassed for the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 general elections, Mr Peter Obi.

According to the Igbo group, “Peter Obi was the governor of Anambra State, and rendered awesome quality services to his people as a governor.

“During his incumbency, Obi displayed exceptional prudence, unassailable integrity, dispositional humility, character comeliness and organizational acumen quite beyond the rusts and tarnish of even the least charitable among the humans.

“The Obi track records show that he is a purveyor of superior morals with a fortitude equal to the martyrs of old. The Obi character and prospectus are like the invaluable treasures stored in heaven.”

Ohanaeze said the general acceptance of Obi and the Labour Party had surpassed imaginations of pundits.

According to the statement, “Obi left the Peoples Democratic Party and joined the Labour Party. Tongues wagged from various corners that the Labour will labour in vain for lack of structure.

“However students of political history will readily recall that it is the ideas from gifted men that develop concentrically into ideology, movements, revolutions and finally to a political structure. And today, the Obi-Datti movement has become an enviable irreversible, irrepressible and formidable structure in Nigeria.

“Obi is a change-agent who has come to rescue Nigeria from a precarious condition. Yet to some others, Obi is a safety net for the people at the bottom of economic totem.

“Ohanaeze Ndigbo therefore admonishes the Igbo that politics is not always the art of the possible, it is most times the art of choosing between the reasonable alternatives.”

Ohanaeze urged Southeast governors, led by Engr Dave Umahi; the Southeast Traditional Rulers led by His Majesty, Ambassador Lawrence Agubuzu; students, traders, among others, ‘to rise in one voice to condemn and tackle the insecurity in their respective jurisdictions’ to enhance the smooth conduct of the 2023 elections.