Chief Audu Ogbeh, chairman, Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), has advised the South-East leaders and stakeholders to lobby if they want to produce the nation’s next President.
He assured them that they would not get the presidency if they resort to threats and blackmail.
Speaking in an interview with newsmen in Kaduna, the ACF suggested that political parties should also be left with the zoning of the presidency.
He observed that the management of political parties had become low, saying that parties should be responsible for zoning the presidency.
According to him, “The political parties today have abandoned the constitutional responsibilities of holding their elected leaders accountable.”
Recalling his days as the National chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Ogbeh said that he organized the first and the only national conference of the PDP where they sat down with the president, then Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and other governors and asked them to account for what they did since they assumed office.
He added that party management was hopelessly low in Nigeria, adding that unless political parties were accountable to the people, there would be no good governance.
He enjoined the Igbos that democracy encourages political power-seekers to be friendly and reach out widely to stakeholders across the country in order to win their respective support.
Chief Audu Ogbeh advised that if the South-East people want to have 2023 presidency, they should begin to lobby, go round the country, talk to people, lamenting that what Nigerians were seeing was that there was so much hatred and attacks, especially on social media about the 2023 presidency.
He stated that nobody had come to them to say he wants to contest, stressing that they would support whomever any party throws up because what they need most is peace.
The chairman of ACF assured that they were not going to endorse people who cannot do the job because if they make a bad choice the people will suffer for it.
He explained that ACF is not a political party but that all they want to see was peace and harmony everywhere ahead of the 2023 general elections, during and even after.
On insecurity in the country, Chief Ogbeh, who is a former minister of agriculture said, “This is barbarism. We are all depressed, we are concerned, we are sad. In most cases, we whispered to governments at all levels about what to do to curtail insecurity, and where we have the opportunity, we make suggestions.”