By Sylvester Udemezue
I’ve just read Osita Chidoka’s piece titled “Igbo Delegates and future of Zoning” With due respect, it’s thoughtless to blame the southeast delegates for anything over the just concluded PDP convention and 2023 Presidential primaries.
Mr. Osita Chidoka’s is a myopic, parochial, write-up. How did Mr. Chidoka expect the southeast delegates to go on a national stage and vote only a southeast candidate? That’d tribalism, for which the southeast is not known!
Dear Mr Chidoka, I tell you for free: a southeast aspirant cannot win the presidential primaries of the any of the two major political parties (PDP and APC) without support of leaders and delegates from outside southeast.
Questions for Osita Chidoka.
Who told you that it’s regional support that makes one the president in Nigeria?
▪️Did the southwest Yorubas vote for Obasanjo in 1999?
▪️Did other NIGERIANS not support Obasanjo from the southwest Yoruba to win in 1999?
▪️Did Odumegwu-Ojukwu not contest in 2003?
▪️Did the Igbo southeast not ignore Odumegwu-Ojukwu to give their votes to OBJ from southWest in 1999?
▪️Did Hausa/Fulani not Ignore Muhammadu Buhari to vote in GEJ in 2011?
▪️Did an Igbo man (Ojukwu) not contest in 2007? Who did the igbos support?
▪️Did Musa Yar’ardua of northern Fulani, not win in all of the entire Southeast?
▪️Did the North not ignore Atiku and Muhammadu Buhari, to support GEJ in 2011?
▪️Recall that in 2015, all of the igbos voted for GoodLuck Jonathan, an Ijaw man from South-South!▪️In 2019, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar won in all igbos/southeast States?
▪️ Have igbos not shown sufficient support, altruism, corporation, accommodation, understanding, and inclusiveness to both PDP and Nigeria, since 1999?
▪️Why shouldn’t Nigeria support an Igbo man the exact same way Nigeria had supported ▪️Yoruba of the southwest in 1999 to produce Obasanjo,
▪️the Hausa/Fulani of the north in 2007 to install Yar’adua, ▪️Ijaw Of the South-South in 2011 to elect GoodLuck Jonathan, and ▪️Fulani of the North in 2015 to enthrone Buhari?
Dear Mr Osita Chidoka, from your reasoning/analysis, you perhaps think that only Igbo/southeast can crown an Igbo man the president of Nigeria! What an absurd, shallow and lackluster way to approach the injustice being meted out to the southeast by NIGERIA!
I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS FOR YOU: Assuming all the 95 delegates of southeast origin had voted for, say, Senator Pius Ayim in the just-concluded PDP convention, would Senator Pius Anyim have won?
▪️Is it this funny story you’re telling here, that made PDP that had been practicing Power-Rotation since 1999 to now throw the contest open in 2022 when it was their turn to reciprocate the faithfulness and loyalty of the Igbo to that party since 1999?
I shall find time to do a detailed riposte to this beside-the-point, wishy-washy argument you have put forward to spite southeast delegates.
In the meantime, note these:
1️⃣The Igbo cannot be the president of Nigeria unless other Nigerians support the Igbo for that purposes. It was clear that other Nigerians didn’t support the Igbo in 2022. Hence, the southeast delegates knew Igbo wouldn’t win.
2️⃣No other geopolitical zone in Nigeria has shown more loyalty, commitment, faithfulness and good faith to PDP, since 1999, than the southeast.
3️⃣ Unfortunately, PDP has turned its back against the southeast, telling the southeast that the southeast means nothing to PDP.
4️⃣The southeast delegates knew this. Hence, the 95 southeast delegates who went for the just concluded PDP convention, had gone there to vote a candidate of their choice, knowing full well that PDP had already chosen to turn its back against the Igbo.
5️⃣The only way the southeast would have expressed their displeasure against the ill-treatment they had got from PDP when PDP unjustly and mischievously threw the contest open, was to have boycotted the convention. In this way, they would have made a bold statement against PDP’s jettisoning of Zoning at the very moment when fairness and equity demanded that the party should zone its Presidency to the southeast. However, this choice, the southeast delegates didn’t consider or adopt. And I am happy they didn’t boycott the convention. On the contrary, the southeast delegates demonstrated that they were true, broad-minded and altruistic Nigerians by going out there in Abuja to vote candidates of their choice even though the party had wounded the southeast.
Ironically, unfortunately and ridiculously, here you’re, blaming the southeast delegates as if they’d done anything wrong.
I personally salute southeast delegates for demonstrating the Igbo spirit: the true Igbo spirit is federal character, broad-mindedness, inclusiveness, altruism and objectiveness.
I shall return to discuss these issues in detail. Meanwhile, please see my earlier piece on power rotation: Rotational Presidency Is A Mandatory Requirement Of The Nigerian Constitution And A Necessary Pre-condition For Stability And National Integration.
4 October 2021. (The Nigerian Voice). You may also read Olusegun Obasanjo’s words on power rotation: “Why we must not toy with power rotation, federal character – Obasanjo; Says no region has monopoly of leaders”
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