It will be a grave mistake and a disaster for All Progressives Congress (APC) if any Igbo man finds his way to be the presidential candidate of the party in 2023. I am consciously aware of the fact that it will be very difficult for many to swallow this frankness especially my Igbo people, and it will even be much harder for those of them who dwell in realm of fantasies, too emotional and sentimental and never objectively confront realities with facts – some of those Igbo politicians in APC who have arrogantly arrogated themselves Igbo leaders that they are not, and their sycophants who selfishly purse their presidential ambition will detest this gospel verdict. The submission is the bitter truth arrived at after critical view of Nigeria’s political situation in retrospect and in contemporary.
The agreement that culminated in the formation of APC was for power to be in the north for eight years and then shift to the south west (Yoruba) for also eight years. Igbo (southeast) was not even in any way considered during the formation of the party, perhaps because no Igbo respected man bought the idea of APC from genesis and a very few who did do not command the respect in Igbo land. Therefore, any attempt to disrupt the agreed political sharing formula now will be a political suicide for APC nationally, though many concerned Nigerians will welcome such because the performance of APC as a ruling party is woeful. Opposition parties will pray for this to happen especially Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
PDP has not recovered from a similar mistake that happened when President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of a blessed memory died in May 2010 and his vice, Goodluck Jonathan took over. The emergence of Jonathan from the south-south geo political zone as a president changed all the political zoning arrangements agreed by PDP’s founding fathers. That single blunder later proved to be the tool that catapulted APC to a position which empowered the party to make PDP, a one-time most powerful political party in Africa, look very contended as an opposition party. If President Jonathan who I consider as a real democrat and have a lot of respect for, had stepped down for a northerner in 2015, just perhaps, PDP would still have been in power till today.
Analytically speaking that option will not be viable for a political party that has lost esteem and genuine followers like APC. With the woeful national performance of APC, I describe the party as a man in coma, and on life support. So, by pronouncing an Igbo man as its presidential candidate you would have succeeded in switching off the life-saving machine and the outcome would be, “To your tents, O Israel,” (ACN, CPC, ANPP, APGA, nPDP”).
No matter how one futuristically views the political situation in Nigeria with regard to the 2023 presidential election, the odds favors PDP to produce the next president if members of the party sincerely work for the interest of the party. APC cannot win any free and fair election in Nigeria, not now and not before the 2023 presidential election.
Uzoma Ahamefule, Vienna, Austria
