Ebonyi State governor, Dave Umahi, on Friday, predicted victory for the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) in next year’s election, picking the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, as his second favourite. Umahi spoke to State House Correspondents after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. He said he met the President to invite him to commission the new Ebonyi State Governor’s Lodge, which his administration just completed.
Responding to a question about his earlier reservations after his loss at the APC presidential primaries and his demand for a president of Southeast extraction in 2023, he said the current Peter Obi political movement would go a long way to prepare the environment that will make an Igbo president possible in the future. Maintaining that the presidential contest in 2023 should be an all-South affair, he said he has been fascinated by the momentum created by the Peter Obi movement because that is awakening awareness about the people of the Southeast and their political relevance.
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Asked about the chances of his party, the APC, in the Southeast in the next elections, the governor noted that the game would change as different dynamics would be out to determine people’s interests. “It’s going to be a different ballgame altogether because when campaigns start the interest of our people in terms of presidency is there, you can’t wish it away, but everyone in Southeast, holding the ticket of their party, is going to be struggling and he’s going to be fighting.
“So, while my party takes the victory, he would have prepared a very good ground for the Southeast presidency, so that nobody is going to write us off and you can see the level of his acceptability, which does not translate to victory over APC, I’m sure of that. After the North has taken eight years, there is no moral justification to be seeking to take another eight years, it should go to the South”, he said. Umahi also explained that security is returning to the southeast because of the successes being recorded nationwide.
“You cannot technically assign the killings to be because of Igbo presidency. You can see that security is improving generally in the country and it has nothing to do with the movement of Peter Obi. It may not translate to outright win, because I must defend my party, I must wish my party well, and I’m having the ticket of my party. But whether what he’s doing has meaning in, not only Southeast, it does have meaning. So, we must never attribute the killings in the Southeast to this kind of movement,” he said.
Speaking about the relevance of the new governors’ lodge he just built, he said “I build mind-blowing projects to let, first and foremost, our brothers and sisters in the Southeast know Ebonyi State has come of age. So, if I have achieved nothing, it’s to instill confidence in our people because even when we talk about marginalization of Southeast, you come to Southeast, we talk about the marginalization of Ebonyi people. So, I built that project for people like you, to assure you that we went to the same school, that we have the same brain and that we’ve come of age and that nobody should neglect Ebonyi State again.”