Notable leaders of South East geopolitical zone have urged all the major political parties in the country to zone their presidential tickets to the region in 2023.
The leaders said that this will strengthen national unity and cohesion.
Rising from a cross-party meeting of the Southeast leaders in Igbere, the home country of the Chief Whip of the Nigerian Senate and former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzo Kalu, the leaders said that the south west and the south-south zones which made up the entire south had respectively produced Nigeria’s presidents in Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, leaving them behind.
In a communiqué made available at the end of the meeting, the leaders also called on Nigerians across all geopolitical zones and ethnic nationalities to support Nigeria’s president of Igbo extraction in 2023.
The communiqué, which was jointly signed by Kalu; the former deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim; Deputy Chief Whip of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Nkeiru Onyejeocha; the spokesman of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu and the National Chairman of United Progressives Party, UPP, Chief Chekwas read; “Political leaders of the South-East across all political persuasions met at Igbere, Abia State, on January 5, 2021, to discuss the political future of the geopolitical zone vis-à-vis the 2023 general election.
“The meeting recalled that Nigerians across political, ethnic, and religious divides fought hard, long, and collectively to enthrone the current democratic dispensation as the surest way to engender national development and guarantee a just and equitable society where every section of the country enjoys a sense of belonging.
“The meeting observed that the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has rotated between Northern and Southern Nigeria and among the various geopolitical zones. Thus, the South West and South-South geopolitical zones in the southern part of the country have produced the President of Nigeria. Hence as power is expected to rotate to the South in 2023, the meeting noted that the South East is the only zone in the South that is yet to produce a President of Nigeria in the current democratic dispensation.