Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Southern senators urge Igbo to re-strategise towards 2019

By Azimazi Momoh Jimoh (Abuja) and Lawrence  Njoku (Enugu)
04 January 2018   |   4:18 am
Ahead of the 2019 elections, Igbo leaders have been charged to come up with the best strategy, with a view to repositioning the South-East geopolitical zone for the nation’s presidency.

Hope Uzodinma

* Youth groups vow to support South East for presidency
Ahead of the 2019 elections, Igbo leaders have been charged to come up with the best strategy, with a view to repositioning the South-East geopolitical zone for the nation’s presidency.

In a goodwill message to a meeting of Igbo leaders from Imo State, the Chairman, Southern Senators’ Forum, Senator Hope Uzodinma, said the advice has become necessary because current political indicators have shown that the South-East might lose out in the nation’s political equation in 2019 even more than it did in 2015.

Uzodima who is also the chairman of the Senate Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariffs, stated that every right thinking Igbo man must be worried that the recently released federal board appointments clearly indicated that the Igbo are losing out in federal political calculations.

“We must be conscious of the fact that other geopolitical zones appear to be outsmarting us as they did in 2015. Right now they are positioning themselves as the strategic allies of the Northern political elite and they appear to be receiving favourable attention as reflected in the federal board appointments,” he explained.

According to him, there is an urgent need for Igbo leaders to put on their thinking caps and re-examine their present political leaning which he believes will put them at a grave disadvantage in 2019.

He declared; “ Let me be honest with you my brothers and sisters, I think we are putting ourselves in a disadvantaged political position, we need to re-strategize and quickly strike strategic alliance with our Northern political elite ahead of the 2019 elections so that what happened to us in 2015 will not be our lot in 2019.”

Meanwhile, a coalition of youth organizations drawn from various parts of the country have pledged to support one of their own from the southeast geo political zone for the presidency in the 2019 general elections.

The decision to support a youth for the presidency was reached at a summit in Arondizuogu, Imo State,  attended by youth groups from the
North, South-West, South-South and South-east states.

Spokesperson of the Arewa youths, Alhaji Haruna Waziri, who led ten other youth groups to the meeting, told journalists that the decision
would engender national unity and cohesion.

Waziri, who noted that the convener of the Nigeria Youth Summit, Mr. Iheanacho Ezeakor, an indigene of Arondizuogu in Imo State, would be backed by the Arewa youths, said the best thing Nigeria should do at the moment was to have an Igbo man as president in 2019.
Asked how such tall dream would come to reality, Waziri said, “yes, it is a difficult task but, we shall change the status quo.’’

In this article

0 Comments