ROBERT OPARA: HEAVY THINGS ON HIS MIND

This is my friend and brother and some of you would have known that he was a Vice Presidential candidate running with the great Al Mustapha in the 2019 elections. He was also a gubernatorial candidate at some point too.

When he told me, I felt like crying at the same time. I just look the bobo, say with all your expertise in international communications and a great scholar of the national project na Al Mustapha you see do running mate. He engaged me with his team over plates of Afang and Fufu on the issue and his take on Nigeria. As he chewed on the goat meat, he spoke on the radicalisation of decision-making processes from the top in a bid to achieve a top-down engagement.

I like him so I listened and after all I said, bro when you decamp, we talk. This morning as I was writing this column, he dropped something really engaging and thought-provoking on my phone.

He said: “It is a brazen political immorality if the presidency is zoned to the South-west in 2023. He continued, “It will confirm the cheeky assertion that the South-east remains a conquered territory that can’t be trusted with power at the centre. He concluded by saying that having a President from the North or South-west will be a travesty.

Just as I was about to nail him, he dropped another one. ‘I blame the political class from the South-east for the deliberate lack of development in the zone that is arguably living with the highest unemployment rate in the country’.

He further enjoined the leadership of the zone on all fronts, political, economic and socio-cultural to close ranks and come up with an economic blueprint that should create socio-economic impact in the zone.

Need I say more. This is his second paragraph na the koko of the matter. I keep quiet.