Politics
2023 PRESIDENCY: Igbo elders blast Kalu, Uzodimma, others working against S’East
THE clamour for the next president to emerge from the South-East zone has been a long agitation from the people of the zone. They argue that it is one of the things that would reduce the current massive agitation for Biafra Republic by the youths from the area, an agitation that has almost ruined the zone.
However, it is worrisome that some politicians are bent on working against the collective pursuit. Notable politicians as Senator Orji Uzor Kalu who initially declared his interest to run for the position suddenly chickened out. Together with Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, the Senate Chief Whip started championing the presidential ambition of Senate President Ahmad Lawan from North-East.
Orji Uzor Kalu and Uzodimma’s move has drawn the anger of Ndigbo
Nonagenarian, foremost Igbo leader and First Republic Aviation Minister, Chief Mbazulike Amechi, angered by the action, has dismissed them and other Igbo politicians supporting non-Igbo aspirants as people with “no political relevance and cannot make any difference toward the project of Nigerian President of Igbo extraction.”
Chief Amechi, who said that though anybody has the right to support an aspirant of his or her choice, expressed joy that the South- East aspiration has been getting good support from leaders from other zones.
Mbazulike therefore, urged aspirants of South-East extraction not to lose sleep over the actions of those politicians he said have no electoral value. He charged them to redouble their campaigns and continue to dialogue with people from other ethnic nationalities in towards realising their ambitions.
“It is the delegates to the parties’ national convention that will decide or determine who will be their parties’ flag bearers not people who are not in the convention or anybody by the side. The delegates will decide who will be candidates of their parties for the contest.
“What we are talking about is getting a candidate from South- East to contest. We are saying that it is the turn of the people of South-East not necessarily Igbo.
“We appreciate notable Nigerians who have been honest and vocal in demanding and insisting that it is the turn of Ndigbo of South-East to produce the next president of Nigeria; we appreciate them, people like Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Chief Edwin Clark and many others, even from Middle Belt. They have been honest and genuine in their demand for Nigerians to support and allow the people of South-East to produce the next president of Nigeria,” Amechi said.
On the issue of Senator Orji Uzor Kalu and some Igbo politicians supporting and canvassing votes for non- Southeasterners, Chief Amechi said: “Orji Uzor Kalu and his likes have the right to support anybody they want to support for the President of Nigeria in the 2023 Presidential election. They are, however, not so relevant in Igbo land; they can’t make any difference.
“While I agree that Nigeria can go on with or without Igbo, I however believe it is necessary that we have a big united country where rights are respected and where equity prevails. If such people who have no relevance in South-East are saying otherwise to the demand of their people, how do you blame them? They cannot make any difference and so nobody should lose sleep about their actions and utterances, you may not even know what is their plans.
“What I think those Igbo politicians singing different tones while our brothers from other parts of the country are speaking and canvassing for support for us to produce Nigeria president of South-East extraction is that, the fact that they are making such campaign shows they have their own agenda and you don’t blame them.
“You don’t know where they are going. Some are looking for the position of Vice President, if a Northerner wins, some are doing that to be relevant, while some are also doing that to get candidates from the North and East to split their votes. So, it depends on some uncertainties.
“The only thing is for the South-East aspirants to exploit the situation, to understand what the situation is; both in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and All Progressives Congress, APC, and adjust strategically. They should take a strategic advantage of the development and continue their outreach with other stakeholders in Nigeria.
“South-East aspirants should go on with their campaign, outreach and discussion with other stakeholders. On May 29 last year, I called a meeting in my house here and told the members of the two leading political parties from South-East that the only way they could make it is to reduce the number of aspirants to one or two from each party.
If they swell up the place, they lose their votes and give the other people chance to beat them and in the process they will all fail. But if they unite and rally behind one or two aspirants, when that one succeeds, he makes sure he accommodates the others. That is the sensible thing to do, but if they want to say that it is either me or nobody, then there may be nobody among them.”
The elder statesman however, reiterated his readiness and willingness to welcome the aspirants to support them with strategies on how they should pursue their aspirations.
“No doubt some have been visiting me, some have been talking with me on telephone, however, I am open to all, and if anybody comes I will receive him and offer my advice. I am still open to them individually and collectively. I will only advise them to collectively come so we can discuss together, it does not stop them from doing what they want to do individually and collectively. Let them have the benefit of my being around and experience in this time.
“Generally speaking, there are two stages to the presidency, the party nomination and the convention and of course the voter, and the Supreme God. If the people of South-East get all these right and the real person for the contest emerges, we can get the seat of the President.”
Also, the Chairman Elders Council of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Emmanuel Iwuayanwu, declared that it was expected of every Igbo politician to support presidential aspirants from the South-East zone and not those from another region of the country.
According to Iwuayanwu, it was what was agreed by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo so that the struggle to actualise the Igbo presidency will be achieved.
“I will speak on this matter later and it will be in detail but what I want to tell you now is that the Ohanaeze Ndigbo has said that we need a President of Igbo extraction.
“So, we expect every Igbo person to support Igbo presidential ambition, especially now that the Southern brothers and Middle Belt are supporting us. They have not changed their support. Everybody agreed it is the turn of Igbo.
“Some of them were giving excuses that we have not come to see them but in 1999, Nigerian leaders came together and gave the presidency to the South-West, just like the same situation the Igbo are now facing, and it was agreed then that the presidency should be given to the South-West zone and it was given to them,” Iwuanyanwu said.
Former National Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Okwesilieze Nwodo, cautioned Igbo politicians supporting political aspirants from other zones to stop sabotaging the common interest of the Igbo.
Nwodo, a former Governor of Enugu State, stated that South-East zone has massive and convincing reasons why they should be given a chance to produce a president for the country in 2023.
While urging the recalcitrant politicians to retrace their steps, he added that they have not been able to convince anybody on their reasons for sabotaging Igbo agenda.
“We have massive and convincing reasons why presidency should be zoned to the Southern Nigeria, and if that is done, why it should be micro-zoned to South-East.
“All our politicians in South-East and Southern Nigeria who are not supporting this project have not been able to convince anybody why they are doing so. I want such politicians to answer the clarion call of the people they are representing in politics,” Nwodo said.
Kalu under fire for supporting Northern presidency
Meanwhile, Senate Chief Whip and Senator representing Abia North, Dr Orji Uzor Kalu, has come under fire for his sudden support for the North to produce the President in 2023, citing the refusal of the two major political parties to specifically cede their presidential tickets to the South-East as reason for his action.
The former Abia Governor and chieftain of the ruling APC, shortly after pulling out of the presidential race, declared support for Senate Presiden Lawan, who he described as a friend.
Kalu’s action is seen as sabotage against the collective interest of Ndigbo.
Hitting Kalu for his “embarrassing position”, Igbo youths under the auspices of Coalition of South East Youth Leaders COSEYL, said they were disappointed in the former governor.
Similarly, the Traditional Prime Minister of Ibeku ancient kingdom, and Kalu’s former ally, High Chief Uche Akwukwuegbu (Bawas), said personal interest was the real motive behind Kalu’s sudden position.
Vanguard
By Okey Maduforo Awka
The former member that represented Anambra East and West Federal Constituency Chief Chinedu Obidigwe has denied a social media handle where he was said to have made Prof Charles Soludo the Governor of Anambra state.
Obidigwe further stated that the report did neither emanate from him or from his Media Aides urging the party not to believe what he called attempt at setting a negative agenda in the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
Obidigwe who is an Aspirant of the party for the Anambra East and West Federal Constituency accused enemies of the party being sponsored by opposition parties to creat problems .
According to the Media Assistant to Obidigwe Mr Dominic Okagbue in a statement;
“The attention of Hon. Chinedu Benjamin Obidigwe has been drawn to misleading and unfounded claims/propaganda being circulated on various social media platforms through a pseudo account, alleging that Obidigwe said he installed the Governor of Anambra State, Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo, CFR, as Governor in 2021”
“We wish to state, without any iota of equivocation, that such a statement never emanated from Hon. Chinedu Obidigwe. It is a desperate move by his political enemies who are bent on tarnishing his image as a tool and technique to advance their unmerited aspirations”
“Obidigwe, in 2021, was merely an electorate with just one vote. Even though he voted for the Governor and APGA, the question remains: can one man’s vote make a Governor?”
“Governor Soludo was elected and made Governor through the collective votes of Ndi Anambra, both in his first and second terms. We therefore call on the reading public to disregard such rumours and treat them as faceless and unfounded allegations geared towards the character assassination of an innocent man” he said.
A former Kano State Governor and leader of the Kwankwasiyya Movement, Rabiu Kwankwaso, says northern political leaders conducted a deliberate assessment of potential allies before settling on Peter Obi as the most capable partner to prosecute the 2027 presidential campaign.
He dismissed concerns about a hidden power struggle between his camp and Obi’s.Politics
Kwankwaso made the disclosure in an interview on Arise TV on Monday, offering one of his most detailed accounts yet of how the North-Southeast political alliance within the NDC was formed.
“I looked around together with our leadership in the north to say, okay, who do we think is capable? Who can come and work together with us honestly so that we can move this country? Along the line, we realised that Peter Obi is at the forefront of it. That’s why we all accepted to work together,” he said.Political candidate profile
Kwankwaso, a two-term former governor of Kano State and the presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party in 2023, leads the Kwankwasiyya movement, a grassroots political force with deep loyalty across Kano and parts of northern Nigeria.Nigeria travel guide
He left the NNPP amid internal disputes before joining the NDC alongside Obi earlier this month.
Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, ran on the Labour Party platform in 2023 and drew massive youth-driven support across the South and urban centres, though he did not win.
Both men formally joined the NDC on Sunday, May 3, defecting from the crisis-hit African Democratic Congress.Politics
At the party’s national convention on Saturday in Abuja, Kwankwaso backed the NDC’s decision to zone its 2027 presidential ticket to the South, describing it as a step toward fairness, healing and national cohesion.
Responding to a question about whether the alliance concealed a quiet rivalry between both camps, Kwankwaso argued that friction between principals and their deputies was a product of greed, not structural tension.
“The problem people are having, especially leaders, is that they are too greedy to the extent that they begin to have issues. There is so much to do. You don’t have to fight your deputy,” he said.
He said his record as a former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, and later as governor of Kano State, showed that political partnerships could hold under pressure.
“I had an opportunity to work with my speaker and we worked very well. I was in Kano for eight years despite the difficulty of my then deputy governor. We were able to work for eight years amicably to the extent that I handed over to him,” he said.
Kwankwaso extended the argument beyond his personal experience, saying the same principle applied at the federal level.
In the Senate and other places, in the NDDC, we worked amicably with people. There is so much to be done and that’s why you have even ministers, other executives, advisors and so on. I don’t see from my experiences of the past why deputies or vice would fight with the president or governor,” he said.
He grounded the alliance in Nigerian political history, tracing a lineage of productive North-Southeast partnerships from the first republic to the present.Nigeria travel guide
“Right from the beginning, this sort of alliance has been in existence. Now we are going back to what Tafawa Balewa did during their time,” he said.
He also referenced the collaboration between former Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and leaders of the NCNC, as well as that of former President Shehu Shagari and his vice president, Alex Ekwueme, in the second republic.
“So also in the second republic, immediately after the war, our leaders, Shagari and others, worked very closely with the southeast, with Alex Ekwueme as his vice president. They are our friends. We want to work together with them,” he said.Politics
Kwankwaso also noted that subsequent administrations had shifted power-sharing away from the South-East, a pattern he suggested the current alliance was correcting.
“There was a change during the third republic where for many obvious reasons an election was annulled and the government under the military decided to bring in Shonekan from the South-West.
Even after that, the military and other leaders worked together and brought in Chief Olusegun Obasanjo from the South-West again. Even Bola Tinubu probably is a beneficiary of all that,” he said.
He was emphatic that the choice of Obi was not driven by regional sentiment alone.
“It wasn’t just because we are going to the South-West just because of the South-West. No. We realised that Peter Obi is at the forefront of it and that’s why we all accepted to work together,” he said.Political candidate profile
The movement of both men into the NDC has triggered a wave of defections, with senators, House of Representatives members and political blocs aligned with their former coalition gravitating toward the new party, rapidly reshaping calculations ahead of the 2027 elections.
The alliance pairs Kwankwaso’s northern grassroots structure and disciplined voter mobilisation with Obi’s national youth engagement and urban electoral momentum, positioning the NDC as one of the main opposition platforms set to challenge President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress in 2027
Former Kano State Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso has dismissed suggestions that his exit from the African Democratic Congress has created a damaging split in the opposition.
He said he and Atiku Abubakar may yet work together before the 2027 general election.
Kwankwaso spoke in an interview on Arise TV on Monday, responding to concerns that his move to the Nigeria Democratic Congress alongside Peter Obi had effectively divided the opposition into two competing blocs ahead of the polls.
“Now, we may still work together before the election. I personally, and I think even Obi himself, decided to leave ADC not because we are fighting with Atiku or anybody there. We decided to leave that party because we realised that there are some issues,” he said
He said the ADC was contending with three major unresolved problems that he believed would make it difficult for the party to field candidates, without specifying what those issues were.
“Whether they will be able to field candidates in that party or not is just a matter of time. It’s not like we had a primary election,” he said
The remarks come after Atiku recently claimed on Arise TV that Kwankwaso’s popularity was confined to Kano State and further divided there by Governor Abba Yusuf.
Atiku, who is seeking the presidency on the ADC platform, also described himself as the most popular politician of northern extraction, saying none of his contemporaries, including Kwankwaso, Aminu Tambuwal and Nasir El-Rufai, commanded a voter base across the North as wide as his.
Kwankwaso did not engage the slight directly, but made clear he bore no grudge.
“Politics is just like a game. I’m not fighting anybody and I’m not expecting anybody to fight me. I have no issue with that. I think we are past that level now,” he said.
He challenged those predicting a vote split in Kano to wait for the election result before drawing conclusions.
“Let’s wait for the election and see whether votes are split in Kano or not,” he said.
Kwankwaso also acknowledged a history of working with Atiku, recalling that he served as the former vice president’s northern coordinator during the 2019 presidential election.
“There was an election in 2019 in Port Harcourt. He won the election. I was his coordinator for the north. We worked for him,” he said.
He traced his broader relationship with Atiku to the 2015 APC presidential primary in Lagos, where he placed second behind Muhammadu Buhari, with Atiku third.
By Okey Maduforo, Awka
The Anambra State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has expelled 30 members of the party for instituting legal actions against the party.
The affected members include some aspirants for the National Assembly, and their expulsion may disqualify them from participating in the party’s primary elections.
Disclosing this shortly after the meeting of the State Executive Committee (SEC) of the party, the State Publicity Secretary, Dr. Sir Valentine Iyiegbu, told reporters that the decision was in line with Section 21, Subsection 5 of the party’s constitution.
“The party discussed those who took the party to court, and many of them are contesting for the House of Representatives tickets of the party,” he said.
“The matter comes up tomorrow, and the SEC stated that what the party constitution stipulates would be followed, which is outright expulsion from the party under Article 21, Subsection 5.”
“The SEC actually ratified their expulsion because they did not exhaust all the internal avenues provided by the party to resolve their grievances,” he added.
Iyiegbu noted that the only reprieve available to the expelled members would be for them to withdraw their court cases.
“It is only when the matters are withdrawn from the court that the party can consider listening to them,” he said.
Speaking on the party’s primary elections, he explained:
“In the case of those contesting for the tickets of the Federal House of Representatives, all the eleven positions have aspirants, while for the Senate, the three positions are also being contested. The screening committees were here to perform their duties,” he noted.
The party also ratified the appointment of a five-man Primary Elections Committee headed by Sir Izuchukwu Okeke, the State Organising Secretary of the party.
By PETRUS OBI
Frontline aspirant for the Aninri/Awgu/Oji-River Federal Constituency seat, Anayo Onwuegbu, has successfully completed the screening exercise conducted by the All Progressives Congress House of Representatives screening panel in Abuja ahead of the party primaries scheduled for Friday, May 15, 2026.
Speaking after the exercise, Onwuegbu expressed satisfaction with the screening process, describing it as a reflection of the party’s commitment to internal democracy, transparency, and credible leadership selection ahead of the 2027 general elections.
The aspirant, who is seeking to represent Aninri/Awgu/Oji-River Federal Constituency under the platform of the APC, stated that he remains focused and prepared to continue to offer quality representation to the people of the constituency.
According to him, “The process once again highlights our party’s commitment to internal democracy, transparency, and the emergence of credible leadership as we prepare for the 2027 general elections.”
He reaffirmed his dedication to the development of the constituency, pledging to serve the people with commitment and purpose if elected.
The APC House of Representatives primaries are expected to hold nationwide on Friday as aspirants battle for the party’s tickets ahead of the 2027 elections.
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