A group, South-East for President 2023, SEFORP, has berated the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, for jettisoning zoning arrangements ahead of its presidential primary election.
The PDP had after its National Executive Committee, NEC, meeting thrown the presidential contest open to all political zones of the country, a development that has not gone down well with the people of the South-East.
In a communique issued after its meeting in Enugu, SEFORP said the action of the PDP NEC was a sad reminder that the civil war was not yet over several years after.
The communique was signed by Rev Okechukwu Christopher Obioha, the National Coordinator, SouthEast for President 2023.
He said, “the jettisoning of the constitution of the PDP on zoning/power rotation and declaring it open, when it is the turn of the South-East zone to the Presidency in 2023, is unacceptable and condemnable.”
Obioha opined that “there is palpable fear in the country that if PDP can flagrantly flout their constitution with reckless abandon, they will as well throw the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the dustbin if they come to power from 2023.
“The political rigmarole by the APC and the PDP regardless of the Federal Character and PDP’s constitutional provision, to deny the South-East zone this clear opportunity to the Presidency, is a strong conclusion, psychologically, that the civil war that supposedly ended 52 years ago is still on unabated.”
He declared that should the two parties fail to concede their tickets to the South-East as it was done to the South-West in 1999, “SEFORP will go on coalition with various groups and lovers of equity, justice and fairness in the six zones of the country to support and midwife a third force to elect the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria from the South-East zone come 2023.”
Obioha warned that a denial of the Presidency of 2023 to the South-East zone will create more apprehension and exact enormous pressure on the security situation in the zone.
“We, therefore, implore the powers that be, political gladiators, the APC and the PDP to do the needful and save this country from unnecessary biases, crises and conflicts,” he advised.
