Igbo Not Due For Presidency In 2019 – Nnamani

BY CHAMBERLAIN ODEY (JOS)
Former Senate President, Dr Ken Nnamani has hinted that agitation for the Igbo to contest the presidency of Nigeria in 2019 is uncalled for, saying Buhari has a constitutional right to contest and win a second term and thereby complete eight-year tenure of his geopolitical zone.
Nnamani, who is serving as chairman of Electoral and Constitutional Reforms Committee made the remarks Saturday while fielding questions on Viewpoint, a 93.7FM current affairs programme in Jos, the Plateau State Capital.
According to Senator Nnamani, apart from President Buhari’s
constitutional right to do two terms in the country’s highest office, it will be unfair to his entire geopolitical zone, especially against the backdrop of recent history that former President Olusegun Obasanjo did two terms in the same office, which also represents the tenure of his South West zone.
Explaining why he left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and later joined the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Nnamani said all efforts he and some other well-meaning members of the PDP then made to save the party from drifting, especially after impunity, imposition and obvious lack of internal democracy culminated in the party’s electoral disaster in 2015 came to naught, “because the PDP had become too hardened”, and later opted for the APC “not because it is perfect
in terms of organisation, but because it still has potentials to be
strengthened for the better”.
On the subsisting leadership crisis in the PDP, Nnamani said it
originated from the same culture of impunity and imposition which bedeviled internal affairs of the party, citing the emergence of Ali Modu Sheriff as chairman of the PDP as a product of arbitrariness, noting that from the time Sheriff joined the party, he could not have grown so fast to become chairman of the party at the time he was brought in and imposed on the system.
Noting that the on-going crisis in the PDP is fundamental, he likened the party to a sick man already in the “intensive care unit” of a hospital, saying he cannot, however, declare
the party “dead”.
Calling on more people of the South East geopolitical zone to join the ruling All Progressives Congress, Nnamani also explained that belonging within will help the South-east people to be available in government circles when certain critical decisions are taken so that they can always represent and defend their own interests.
Defending the essence of his Electoral and Constitutional Reforms Committee as not “another job for the boys” as criticised, Nnamani said review of electoral laws is a continuous process for “transiting democracies like Nigeria”, especially given our expedient situation where elections are won often through “legal ambush” rather than through majority opinion expressed at the poll.