Christopher Isiguzo in Enugu
The Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, on Sunday in Enugu declared that unlike the 2015 election, President Muhammadu Buhari will garner over a million votes from the South-east in the 2019 elections.
Okechukwu, who is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said the South-east will serve as a shoreline of the president and by extension the APC in the 2019 presidential election.
The VON DG, who spoke to journalists at his hometown, Eke, Udi Local Government area of Enugu State during the flag-off of the town’s annual ‘Igwa Nshi’ cultural festival, said Ndigbo were no longer ready to repeat the mistakes of the past.
According to Okechukwu, President Buhari and by extension APC would get more than one million votes in the South-east to balance whichever tendency they would miss in the North and the South-west in the 2019 electoral vote distributive curve.
He spoke against the backdrop of the parallel APC congresses held in different states and the threat posed by the nPDP group in the ruling party.
Asked how the APC and by extension President Muhammadu will survive the parallel congresses across the country and the threat of nPDP, Okechukwu said that the “South-east is the shoreline of Mr President and by extension the APCâ€.
“My happiness is that the South-east come 2019 will be the shoreline of our dear president and by extension our great party, the APC. Buhari will get more than a million votes in the South-east. The so called parallel congress members under close scrutiny are not truly APC people. To be exact, the mainstream APC in the South-east will balance whichever tendency we miss in the North and South-west in the electoral vote distributive curve of 2019 presidential election. Be it the nPDP or ADC.
“We got less than 200,000 in the South-east in 2015, but with rapid infrastructural development going on in the South-east, we will leverage for Ndigbo are not ingrates. We will cover the missing gap envisaged from the South-west and nPDP in the North.
“Don’t forget that those who enlarged the APC South-east mainstream today were loyalists of Owelle Rochas Okorocha. Today they are in league with President Buhari, they are passionate to re-elect him. I’m excited with the rate their campaign for Mr. President is going and the response of the electorate” Okechukwu said.
Asked why he is in the East most of the time, Okechukwu said: “Yes, I have acquired modern ICT platform, new office and concluding arrangement for staff housing and solar energy for Voice of Nigeria; now I’m in the East to revive the indelible legacy of North-east alliance bequeathed to us by the great Zik of Africa. Zik was Nigeria’s persona dictum and unparalleled nationalist. He built the North-east alliance and as his acolytes we are consolidating it as Pan-Nigerians.”
On how Buhari would garner over a million votes with the crises here and there and in APC, Okechukwu described ‘Buhari’s Roads, Rails, Agriculture and Power (RRAP) Projects’ as the development resurgimento, which would reinforce the private sector and attract more Foreign Direct Investment.
According to him, when you have 5,000 kilometres of federal roads, 5,000 kilometres standard gauge rail lines and 5,000 additional megawatts and self sufficiency in food production in the next five years, there would be peace, progress and prosperity.
