–Blank NEWS Online (NIGERIA) –By Austen AKHAGBEME:
One of the most disturbing issues on the national question that most Nigerian political elites shy away from discussing, is the Igbo Presidency.
The need and the quest for the Igbo Presidency has become like a sore on the thumb; whether it is painful or not, it cannot escape the glance of the eyes.
It is against this backdrop that one sees the alleged but undeclared intention of Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi state, to run for Presidency in 2023, as a step in the right direction. Some have wilfully dismissed it as a tall ambition of a dreamer who needs to go back to sleep, to dream again to a relishing realization that the first dream was a fluke joke.
Ever since Dave Umahi decamped to the ruling Party, local and top politicians from Ebonyi state has gone for his jugular. He’s been called pitiable names and even accused of a plan to assassinate a prominent politician, an indegene of Ebonyi state and former President of the Senate, Chief Pius Anyim.
Umahi is accused, by his detractors, to have been deceived by those who wants to cause political disaffection within the rank and file of the Igbo elites, to render them informidable for the daunting task ahead come 2023.
Be that as it may, it is time to begin to think of a power equation that favours the Igbo as far as the position of the President and commander in chief is concerned. Here is a people, beaten and broken in our teething years of madness, until everything was taken away from them in the name of Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reintegration after the needless civil war.
Yet, the silent disdain for the Igbo Presidency, persist within the Nigerian Power elites, as they’re often treated like political outcasts in the Nigerian chess game of politics, at the Presidency level.
There are those who think the Igbo are not United enough to form a common formidable front to articulate and realise their ambition. This narrative is becoming antiquated and tantamount to giving a dog a bad name to help in hanging him.
Dave Umahi must have chosen to be defiant, dareful and rebellious to the conservative local power brokers within the Igbo elites while looking towards Abuja for succour. May the Lords of Aso Rock embrace him and grant him his heart desires with sincerity.
- Austen AKHAGBEME is a Columnist with Blank NEWS Online
