Nigeria Needs Igbo President to Enjoy Peace, Says Igbo Think Tank

*Demands additional state in South-East

Emmanuel Ugwu-Nwogo in Umuahia

The interest of Nigeria would best be served if the next president eventually emerged from the South-East, as genuine peace and harmony would descend on the country as products of equity, justice and fairness.
This was among the resolutions adopted by participants at the 2022 Igbo International Christmas Retreat organised by Igbo Think Tank and Nzuko Ndigbo held at Umuahia, Abia.

In a four-point communique issued yesterday at the end of the retreat, the participants stated that the current agitation for self-determination by youths in the South-East with its attendant security problems would fizzle out if, in 2023, Nigerians elect a president of Igbo extraction.

The communique jointly signed by the Chairman of the board of trustees of Igbo Think Tank, Prof Madubuike Ezeibe and the President of Nzuko Ndigbo, Chief Chuks Ibegbu, noted that the separatist agitation in the South East was a product of deep feelings of marginalisation.

“Even with nominations for the 2023 elections completed, there is still a window: Nigerians should vote for competent presidential candidates from the South-East in line with that zoning policy which we adopted to have peace at this stage of our democratic growth,” stated the communique.
The think tank noted that electing a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction in 2023 “will make it impossible for agitators to convince young ones to join them, and this will give us peace as happened with NADECO in the South-West in 1999.”

It noted that the decision to cede the presidency to the South-West in 1999 was a patriotic act undertaken to assuage the feelings of the Yoruba following the injustice of the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election.

“Till today, NADECO (body formed for that agitation) died and peace was restored in the (South-West) zone. We from South East are very happy about that restored peace and wish same would happen to our zone,” said the Igbo group. “Let us repeat our 1999 patriotism in 2023 for good of our nation.”
It regretted that the two major political parties (APC and PDP) failed to give their presidential tickets to the South-East, thereby erasing the expectation that the 1999 scenario of leaving the presidential contest to only people from deserving zone, in this case, the South-East.

It argued that since every geopolitical zone in Southern Nigeria had produced Nigeria’s President, except the South-East, equity and justice demand that power should go to South East in 2023 when it leaves the North, where it stayed for eight consecutive years.

On the issue of geopolitical imbalance, the communique called for the immediate creation of an additional state for the South-East, as the 2014 national conference recommended, to bring the zone, which has only five states, at par with others with six, except North-West with seven states.
“Leaving the South-East with only five states and 95 local governments amounts to marginalisation, and it’s helping the agitators in their campaign,” added the statement.