2023: Southeast APC to approach presidential bid united – Ngige

The Southeast geo-political zone will not go into the 2023 presidential elections as a divided house, Chris Nigeria, a major aspirant from the zone and chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has said.

Ngige spoke with some senior journalists in Lagos, weekend, saying leaders of the party from the zone would be meeting this week with all presidential aspirants on the platform of the APC from the Southeast to take a position in their bid to produce Nigeria’s next president.

Deliberations in the crucial meeting, according to the former governor of Anambra State, would focus on how the geopolitical zone would approach the APC presidential primary election in a manner devoid of rancour and backstabbing.

He said the meeting may even consider a consensus aspirant from the zone if it is discovered such is needed for a common front.

According to Ngige, a former senator and Nigeria’s current minister of labour and employment, APC leaders from the zone are also reaching out to other geo-political zones to support the Southeast to produce a president in 2023.

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The minister said consultations around this are being intensified in view of the fact that Nigeria has not had a president of the Southeast extraction since the civil war, adding that never in the history of Nigeria has the quest for equity and fairness in the nation’s political space been as strong for the zone to be given a sense of belonging.

“We aspirants from the Southeast are stretching hands of fellowship to people from other zones and telling them to look at their Southeast brothers that they have not since independence been in the executive position of governance in Nigeria except when there was a coup during the tenure of Aguyi Ironsi, the military coup which lasted for six months. For 42 years there hasn’t been any South easterner as president or prime minister of Nigeria,” he said.

Speaking further Ngige said: “If we want to be our brother’s keeper and bury the pains of the civil war and the impression that a certain group of people is not wanted in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, our brothers from other zones should concede that position to the Southeast in 2023.”

The APC president primary election is slated for May 31 and June 1.