2023: I KNOW WHO WILL SUCCEED BUHARI, IGBO LEADER PREDICTS

Chief Chekwas Okorie.

A prominent Igbo leader, Chief Chekwas Okorie, who is currently the National Chairman of the United Progressives Party, UPP, has advised his fellow Ndigbo to stop being deceived by some politicians of Igbo extraction going about with the gospel of the presidency coming to Igbo land in 2023.

He stated this at the weekend while feeding questions from journalists. He said that Ndigbo should be mindful of what promises they rely on particularly those that bother on the presidency coming to the South East in 2023, adding that since President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress, APC, never promised to hand over power to them in 2023, there was no need giving Ndigbo any false hopes to that effect. He therefore described the offer being bandied about by some South East APC leaders as the ‘worst form of deceit’, noting that only the unintelligent would believe it.

“Those are carrying about the promise that Buhari and the APC would hand over to an Igbo successor in 2023 should stop being deceived. Prseident Buhari and APC never promised made any such promises. The fact is that Buhari would rather hand over power to his Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has been loyal to him, to compensate the Southwest region. So it is a very unintelligent proposal by mostly Igbo politicians in APC that Igbo would succeed Buhari in 2023, because it’s not an APC agenda. Buhari or his close aides never alluded to anything like that. You always hear of it from Igbo people who do not know what they want from APC,” Chief Okorie stated.

He added that they, the APC leaders, believed that the only way they could get Igbo votes was to make this kind of promise that was not based on logic or any political thinking.

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“It is the worst form of deceit and it’s only the unwary, especially those on the lowest rung of intelligence quotient, that will buy into that kind of story. I say this very clearly because President Buhari has a Vice and they have been working very closely together from the observation of many Nigerians. This is a man that held forth when the president was away for over 100 days on sick leave.

“And if for any unfortunate reason Buhari comes back in 2019 (I put it that way because I’m one of those that don’t think he should come back) and decides to run with this same very loyal Vice President, what makes anybody think that after eight years in office, he will not reward him and his political zone, but them and go for the South-East?” he stressed.

Chief Okorie wondered what the attraction from the South East region was that would make Buhari go in that direction? He also wondered what Buhari has ever said or done that would give Ndigbo the impression that the President loved them that much as to raise a successor from among them.

“As a matter of fact, he has used every opportunity to tell them that he doesn’t like them. Even when Igbo leaders went to see him, he reminded them that he had only 198,000 votes from the South-east in 2015. He hasn’t forgotten the support that the South-east gave to former President Goodluck Jonathan. So, how he would turn around and reward them with support for presidential position against those who first of all made up the number for him to become president and gave him a loyal vice beats my imagination,” Chief Okorie mused.

Thus, he considered those who were canvassing this promise of an Igbo presidency in 2023 as exceedingly mischievous, dishonest and untrustworthy, and believed it could only be an act of stupidity, since they knew that they it could only result in the people being grossly misled.

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