How Political Parties Deny Igbo Politicians Shot At Presidency – UPP Chair

The agitation for a president of Igbo extraction was re-echoed weekend when the National Chairman and founder of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Chief Chekwas Okorie said that Igbo political elite must unite for them to produce Nigeria’s next president in 2015.

Chief Okorie made this known at an Igbo political summit organised by the South East Development Association (SEDA) in Enugu to discuss issues affecting the Igbo nation and the 2015 elections.

“The conspiracy against Igbo political relevance in Nigeria found eloquent expression in the obnoxious provisions of the 1999 Constitution imposed on the country by the government of Abdulsalami Abubakar Military Junta. The effect of this wicked and lopsided Constitution is that Igbo marginalization became a matter of state policy and the denial of Igboman to ever contest the Presidency of Nigeria was entrenched.

“That is why our illustrious and highly qualified sons like Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, Chief Arthur Nzeribe, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, Chief Edwin Ume-Ezoke, etc who aspired to become the Presidential Candidates of their Political Parties were shoved aside with ignominy”, he said.

Okorie observed that Ndigbo would always unite politically when there is a platform where they control its machinery stressing that the newness of NPP and APGA in the second and third republic coupled with their apparent “lack of large financial war-chest” to prosecute the presidential project, did not deter the Igbo from standing to be counted as a critical factor in Nigeria’s political equation.

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