The Minister of Transport, Mr. Chibuike Amaechi, has said the Igbo cannot become the president of Nigeria without the support for President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.
He said the best thing the Igbo would do was to rally round Buhari’s re-election bid to facilitate the Igbo presidency.
He called on the Igbo to vote for President Buhari’s second term as a way of giving him the chance to serve out the term of the North and make way for the Igbo.
Amaechi stated this in a lecture at the 12th convocation of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State.
He spoke on the topic: “The Igbo in the politics of Nigeria.”
He said, “You (Igbo) did not vote for Buhari, true or false? You voted for the PDP and what did they do for you? The PDP abandoned the Enugu-Onitsha expressway since 1999, but Buhari is working on it with dispatch, true or false?
“Buhari is working on the second Niger Bridge; he is working on the Otuocha-Ibaji-Abuja Road; he is working on the Abakaliki-Onueke Road; he is working on the Oji-Achi-Naku Road in Enugu State; he is working on the Ozalla-Akpugo-Amagunze Road. He is also working on Aba-Ikot Ekpene Road.
“Under Buhari, all major cities of the South-East are captured in the existing railway project. Name one government that has done up to this within two years. Our problem is that we are just being emotional.”
He said part of the solutions to Igbo problem in Nigeria was for the Igbo to move into a national political party after what the disappointments they had encountered in sectional parties.
He described the PDP and the All Progressives Grand Alliance as regional parties that would not take the Igbo to anywhere.
The President General of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, who spoke as a guest lecturer said the trouble with Nigeria was ethnic suspicion and fear of marginalisation.
He said Nigeria was not run as a federation , adding that pockets of marginalisation agitations were still being meted out to the Igbo.
He said, “I am yet to see a federation in which the security apparatus is domiciled in one section of the country. Doing so has not also solved the security problems of the country.
“Our country is in a state of war, with no one declaring it. I refuse to agree with you (Amaechi) that people should join a federal movement as you said. If our constitution is not revisited for people to live and feel safe, then we are wasting our time.” (Punch)
