Chukwudike Ndubeze, Awka
Founding President, Congress for Igbo Agenda, CIA, Rev Innocent Peace-Udochukwu, has urged the people of South-East to throw their weight and support behind Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential aspirant, Mr Peter Obi, if the zone “hopes to produce the next President of Nigeria in 2023.”
He said this, Thursday, while addressing journalists at the Nigerian Union of Journalist, NUJ, Anambra State Council April Congress, held at the Godwin Ezeemo International Press Centre, Awka, the state capital.
The Peace-Udochukwu said “Peter Obi is a competent, credible Igbo politician with national appeal.”
Continuing, he said “Igbos must rally round him because deep down, Nigerians know that the Igbo deserve the presidency more than any other major politico-ethnic bloc.”
Rev. Peace-Udochukwu who delivered a paper titled: “A Case For Nigerian President of Igbo Extraction, Equity and Good Governance,” noted that Obi remained best material among aspirants who had so far declared interests in becoming the next president of the country.
He noted that the former Anambra state governor who in March, declared his presidential ambition, has had no dent of corruption and had demonstrated capacity by recording “arguably the best gubernatorial tenure in the country since 1999.”
Continuing, he said: “Having a competent and proven Igbos like Peter Obi as president will permanently address and satiate the legitimate complaints of political exclusion and its attendant separatist agitation which has turned the once peaceful Southeast region to a theatre of war.”
Rev Peace-Udochukwu who doubles as the President, Living Fountain Ministries International, LIFOM, stated that time has come for the Igbo to produce the president, insisting that a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction “will repair the economic, political damage and stagnancy of the past decade.”
He regretted that Nigerians had allowed tribal, religious sentiments and gross ignorance to becloud their senses of reasoning thereby throwing justice, equity and sound reasoning to the wind and affirmed that the emergence of Igbo President in Nigeria would remain the most significant investment in the country’s national development.
While the CIA founder maintained that years of marginalization and unwarranted assaults had relegated people of the region to the back seat in the country’s leadership, he said “the Igbo must wake from her lamentations and slumber and put her focus and God-given strength to use”.
“Majority of Nigerians especially the non- Igbo must be outraged by the injustices, non-equitable policies that have been meted out to the South-East region of the country especially in the area of national leadership.
“Ndigbo have built this country through their sweat and blood while suffering gross injustices and shameful humiliation yet out of bottomless vitality they have continued to thrive and develop every nook and cranny of the country.
“If the inexplicable cruelties of marginalization and injustices could not stop us, those who are now opposed to our being given justice and equity by allowing us to produce the next executive president of this country for the first time since independence will surely fail,” he said.
