Ben Ezechime, Enugu
A group, the Igbo Mandate Movement (IMM), has made case for an Igbo Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 10th National Assembly.
The Coordinator of the group, Mr Igboeri Arinzechukwu, stated this in a statement made available to Journalists in Enugu.
The group said its decision was based on political permutations following the emergence of Bola Tinubu from the South-West part of the country and his vice Abubakar Shettima from the North-East.
According to Arinzechukwu, the All Progressives Congress (APC), winners of the 2023 election, have zoned the Senate Presidency to the South-South, “therefore, the option for the Igbo is the speakership.”
“As a body driven by Igbo interests within a great, free, fair and equitable Nigeria, is making a case for the zoning of the seat of the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives for the 10th National Assembly to the South-East Region of the Federation.
“Our decision to canvass for the zoning of the position of the Office of Speaker of the House of Representatives is much dependent on a number of sacrosanct facts,” the group said.
It said the first of such was based on the fact that since the emergence of Rt. Hon Ume Ezeoke, as Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Second Republic under the auspices of the accord between the NPN and the NPP, no Igbo man has occupied the position of speaker.
According to the group: “The second is that under the 4th Republic, Ndigbo again are the only major ethnic group that is yet to produce one of their own as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
“So, you can imagine that in 24 years of our democratic experimenting, the two major ethnic groups, the Hausa Fulani and the Yoruba, have occupied the positions of Speaker save for Ndigbo.
“The Third fact is that true Nigerians must be desirous of seeking to reintegrate Ndigbo into the mainstream politics of the nation.
“There is need for Ndigbo to be strategic in its interactions with other regions that make up the Nigerian nation, thus we must present only our best not only for purposes of acceptability but also for strategic reasons,” he said.
He said that the APC as a party must move towards the reunification of Nigeria by seeking to reintegrate the South-East region.
“To do so, it must deploy it’s best hands; people who will not only seek power for themselves but will seek to serve the people and then present the APC as the beautiful bride to Ndigbo.
“The fourth and the most important is that Ndigbo must move with the times and trends of today’s politics by entrenching new faces, faces devoid of the many baggage, blemishes and scars of our past politics in which everything and anything did go?
“We can thus be afforded such by queuing up behind such a new face from where we can begin to chart a new course for Ndigbo’s politics.”
