2023: APC group urges political parties to zone presidential ticket to South East
[From CHINEDU NWAFOR, Abakaliki]
Group, South East Mandate, (SEM) has urged all political parties in Nigeria to zone their presidential tickets to the South East come 2023 in the spirit of justice, equity and fairness.
“Every political party in Nigeria is aware that South East is ripe for their Presidential tickets in 2023, in the spirit of justice, Equity and good conscience.”
The Convener of the group and Commissioner representing the South East in National Assembly Service Commission, Senator Julius Ucha, stated this on Sunday while briefing Journalists at the end of its National Executives Council meeting in Enugu.
Ucha maintained that “South East is a solid part of Nigeria and should have opportunity of producing the president of this country because, equality is equity.”
The former Chairman, Senate Committee on Works said SEM had identified lack of trust, latent fear, suspicion and prejudices as some of the factors holding the South East down in Nigeria’s political equation and had decided to work on it to enable the region assume its right of place in Nigeria’s polity.
According to him, one of the problems facing the region is their inability to build a common platform to articulate their common interest and this difficulty is what we intended to resolve by building this platform.
“This platform is expected to provide opportunities through which we can vigorously debate our interest, set our priorities and tailor them to achieve our common purpose.
“If we have a forum where we exhaust our republican energies and channel it to a common cause without making a public show of our differences, most Nigerians will be denied the space to always tag us as a people who will never agree on a common course,” he said.
“The purpose of this movement is to persuade the people of South East extraction who may have presidential ambition to know the need of coming together to present a candidate that will be generally accepted and have capacity to drive the process, and we are on cause to achieving that”, he added.
Ucha also disclosed that they were in synergy with any group that’s working for the sole purpose of producing a president of South East extraction in 2023.
South East Mandate also urged President Muhammadu Buhari to facilitate the process of APC nominating their presidential candidate from a trusted member of the party who’s of South East region