The Chairman Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Chief Audu Ogbeh has on Thursday in Kaduna State revealed how South East leaders can make sure an Igbo man becomes President in 2023.
He said the style of seeking the seat of power through threats and blackmail may not work.
According to him, an Igbo man can become President only by lobbying.
Ogbeh observed that the management of political parties had become low, saying that parties should be responsible for zoning the presidency.
He said: “The political parties today have abandoned the constitutional responsibilities of holding their elected leaders accountable.”
The former Minister of Agriculture recalls when he was the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), saying that he organized the first and the only national conference of the PDP where they sat down with the president, then Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and other governors and asked them to account for what they did since they assumed office.
Ogbe maintained that unless political parties were accountable to the people, there would be no good governance in Nigeria.
He enjoined the Igbos that democracy encourages political power-seekers to be friendly and reach out widely to stakeholders across the country in order to win their respective support.
Chief Audu Ogbeh advised that if the South-East people want to have the 2023 presidency, they should begin to lobby, go round the country, talk to people.
He lamented that what Nigerians were seeing was that there was so much hatred and attacks, especially on social media about the 2023 presidency.
Ogbeh stated that nobody had come to them to say he wants to contest, stressing that they would support whomever any party throws up because what they need most is peace.
The chairman of ACF assured that they were not going to endorse people who cannot do the job because if they make a bad choice the people will suffer for it.
He explained that the ACF is not a political party but that all they want to see was peace and harmony everywhere ahead of the 2023 general elections, during and even after.
“This is barbarism. We are all depressed, we are concerned, we are sad. In most cases, we whispered to governments at all levels about what to do to curtail insecurity, and where we have the opportunity, we make suggestions,” said the ACF leader while lamenting current state of the nation as regards security.
