Adeseye Ogunlewe, a former minister of Works, has said that it would be difficult for the Southeast region to produce Nigeria’s president in 2023 with the current state of affairs in the country.
Ogunlewe said the inability of the people of the Southeast to unite under a common leadership would work against their presidential ambition.
He disclosed this while featuring on Arise TV’s ‘The Morning Show’ programme on Wednesday.
Ogunlewe, a former chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) who defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2019, noted that the lack of cohesion among the Southeast people would work against them in 2023.
He, however, advised the region to invest more in party politics ahead of future elections.
According to him, “Another set of people that are appropriate, they are the people from the Southeast but they have the problem of leadership.
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“They are so endowed that they are spread all over Nigeria and they can gather a lot of votes, but they are too divided. An Imo person, an Enugu person, an Ebonyi man will not listen to themselves.
“They have the money. If they sit down and aggregate what they can offer, they have more money than almost everybody in Nigeria.
“But have you seen one person from the South-east that said ‘I am interested in the presidency, I will start to campaign all over Nigeria immediately, raise money for me?’ and influence the structure of the party?”
Ahead of the 2023 presidential election, agitations for the zoning of the presidency to the Southeast have intensified recently.
Leaders of the region say that it is their turn to produce the president, warning that the region would vote against any political party that nominates its candidate from another region.
Recently, two politicians from the region, Kingsley Moghalu, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and Sam Ohuabunwa, the President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) declared their intention to vie for the presidency in 2023.
Several other prominent politicians from the region including Peter Obi and Rochas Okorocha, former governors of Anambra and Imo states respectively, and Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State are been touted to be interested in contesting for the presidency in 2023.
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