Uzodimma Urges APC, PDP to Pick Presidential Candidates from South-east
The Governor of Imo State, Mr. Hope Uzodimma, has tasked the All Progressive Congress (APC) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), which are the two major political parties in Nigeria, to pick their presidential candidates for the oncoming 2023 presidential election from the South-east geopolitical zone.
Uzodimma said that this would decentralise powersharing in the country in a manner that would ensure inclusiveness, justice and equity.
He gave this task yesterday during an interactive session with journalists in Lagos .
The governor said that by choosing their respective presidential candidates from the South-east, the PDP and the APC would have completed the circle that started in 1999 when the two dominant political parties at the time, namely the PDP and APC/ Alliance for Democracy picked their presidential candidates from South-west to compensate the zone for the annulled 1993 presidential election that was won by late Chief Moshood Abiola, who hailed from the South-west.
He said: “I know that in the South-east today, we are in a strong hunger to produce the next president of Nigeria. But we cannot do it alone and needs other members of the parties in several political zones to work with us.
“But, in 1999, after the annulment of June 12, 1993, presidential election, it was the decision of the national leadership of Nigerian political parties to allow the South-west to produce the president to cool the temperature.
“Now the situation is repeating itself. There is a national sympathy for the South-east to produce Nigeria’s president. What will make it work is for the two major political parties to produce their presidential candidates from the South-east geopolitical zone. That way we will decentralise this power-sharing in a manner that will become all-inclusive and justice and equity would have been seen to be done.”
Uzodimma also used the occasion to state unequivocally that South-east governors are united in matters affecting the security in the zone, adding that opposition politicians who could not stomach their defeat are behind the wave of insecurity in the region, particularly in Imo State.