Ahead of the 2023 general election, a pressure group; South East Mandate, SEM, has emerged in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, with the sole purpose of actualizing a president of South East extraction come next election.
Briefing newsmen after their National Executives Council meeting held in Enugu, the Convener of the group, Senator Julius Ucha, said they have identified lack of trust, latent fear, suspicion and prejudices as some of the factors holding the South East down in Nigeria’s political equation and they have decided to work on it to enable them achieve their purpose.
The former Chairman, Senate Committee on Works said that another problem facing the region is their inability to build a common platform “to articulate their common interest and this difficulty is what we intended to resolve by building this platform.
“This platform is expected to provide opportunities through which we can vigorously debate our interest, set our priorities and tailor them to achieve our common purpose.
“If we have a forum where we exhaust our republican energies and channel it to a common cause without making a public show of our differences, most Nigerians will be denied the space to always tag us as a people who will never agree on a common course.”
Sen. Ucha maintained that “south east is a solid part of Nigeria and should have opportunity of producing the president of this country because, equality is equity.”
Commenting on their preferred choice of candidate should the opportunity be given to them, the Convener stated that “the purpose of this movement is to persuade the people of South East extraction who may have presidential ambition to know the need of coming together to present a candidate that will be generally accepted and have capacity to drive the process, and we are on cause to achieving that.”
On the call for every political party in Nigeria to cede their Presidential ticket to the south-east, Ucha opined that “Every political party in Nigeria is aware that south east is ripe for their Presidential ticket in the spirit of justice, Equity and good conscience.
He also said that they are in synergy with any group that’s working for the soul purpose of producing a president of South East extraction in 2023.
South East Mandate also urged president Muhammadu Buhari to facilitate the process of APC nominating their presidential candidate from a trusted member of the party who’s of south east extraction.
Also in attendance at the meeting includes Sen Tony Agbo, Dcn. Ideato C. Ideato Okoli, The Caretaker Committee Chairman of Enugu APC, Dr. Ben Nwoye and a host of other dignitaries from across the South East states.
