Abaribe has told the ruling APC and opposition PDP not to deny the Southeast 2023 presidential ticket.
According to The Nation, Senate Minority Leader Enyinnaya Abaribe cautioned the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC) against citing insecurity as a reason why the Southeast should not be given a chance to produce their 2023 presidential candidates.
Abaribe said at the inauguration of Igbonine, a group promoting Nigerian president of Southeast extraction in Enugu, Enugu State yesterday, that the APC and the PDP cannot pretend not to be aware that the Igbo had been pushed to the fringes in the country.
He pointed out that every Igbo believes that is a Nigerian and therefore has a legal right “to aspire to President of Nigeria.”
His words: “So, let no one say to us, ‘because of the insecurity in Southeast, an Igbo cannot be President of Nigeria in 2023. I have started hearing some people threatening that. Do not use a different standard for different people in the same country,
“Was there no trouble in the Northwest when (Muhammadu) Buhari (from Katsina State) was elected President? In, fact, Buhari was nominated by Boko-Haram during President Goodluck Jonathan’s Presidency as their negotiator.
”No amount of threat should stop Ndigbo from consistently demanding an equitable treatment in Nigeria and that which is our due. We’re Nigerians and should be given everything that is due to us, including Presidency.”
Abaribe also lamented that Nigeria is stifling almost every zone, insisting that only restructuring was capable of solving the problem.
He said: “If the dominant position in Nigeria today is restructuring, then the minimal demand of Ndigbo in Nigeria cannot be anything less than that of restructuring.
“We cannot be in a country where my own child will be required to score 120 percent to enter a unity school while another child from elsewhere will be required to score just two points to gain admission to the same school.”
The lawmaker maintained that all that the Igbo wanted in a united Nigeria is to be emancipated from unfair treatment in their own country.
His words: “The Igbo want emancipation. We have gone through a lot; we have gone through war and even the money we had was reduced to 20 pounds. But we rose from the ashes of that war and became the glue that holds Nigeria together today.”
