2023: Igbo leaders reject pressure for VP ticket as Okorie calls for alliance

Despite the strong agitations by the South East zone to produce the next President of Nigeria in the 2023 general election, the North appears to be making strong inroads for the zone to accept the vice presidential tickets of both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Consequent upon this development, the leaders of the zone have warned their kit and kin in the two parties not to accept the position of Vice President or Director General of any presidential candidate from the North.

However, the founding National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the United Progressives Party (UPP) Chief Chekwas Okorie has called for an alliance between the North and the South East while fielding a presidential candidate through APGA as a trump card for negotiation with the would be party that would produce the next president.

According to the former governor of Anambra State, Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife, who spoke yesterday, the South East cannot accept any other offer other than the number one seat in the country.

He contended that any politician of Igbo extraction that accepts to be running mate or Director General of a Northern Presidential candidate has betrayed his people adding that Ndigbo cannot continue to play a second fiddle in the political equation of the country.

Similarly the National Vice President of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Demian Okeke has urged Igbo politicians not to fall to the pressure of becoming running mates to any candidate from the Northern part of the country contending that it amounts to becoming a sell out on the wishes and aspirations of the people.

“We have been in this struggle for years now and at every election we lower our guards and take up the Vice Presidential ticket and sometimes the Senate President or Director General of their campaign organisations and this time it would not happen.

“We cannot come this far to reduce ourselves to the level of becoming running mates to a zone that has produced the president of this country at every dispensation and our people should be mindful of the carrot being dangled before us,” he said.

But Chekwas Okorie though a strong supporter of a President of South East extraction and one time Presidential candidate of the UPP saw conspiracy in the activities of the PDP and APC in their respective National Conventions where the leaders of the party had to force it down the neck of aspirants for the National leadership of the two parties positing that a similar episode would play out at the primary elections. (New Telegraph)