Ngige Calls on Igbos to Fight for 2023 Presidency

Dr Chris Ngige spoke about the recent event of the Senate President Bukola Saraki that former Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu was scheming to be handed power by President Muhammadu Buhari after a second term in office.

In an interview with journalists in the weekend, the minister said, there was nothing wrong in Tinubu aspiring to become the president of Nigeria, but it behooves the people of the South-east to struggle for it, when power shifts to the south in 2023.

Therefore calling on the people of the South-east to fight for the 2023 presidency and not wait for it to be given to them. Ngige said: 

“What Saraki was saying is a non-issue as far as I’m concerned. Asiwaju has the right to aspire. He is a human being. All of us have our ambitions. He has the right to aspire. 

"After all, he aspired to the post of vice-president. You can’t kill people’s ambitions. We’re in politics to serve and if you feel you can serve in a very high office, you should aspire to go there."

“It is left for those who are contesting with you to also square up and do their own work if they feel it’s their turn, they should do their own work so that they will be more acceptable than yourself. Power is not served, you must struggle for it."

“So, on moral grounds, on basis of equity, it will be the turn of the South-east, they must step out to say it is our turn with enough punch and convincing reasons." 

"Part of the reasons and the arguments will be that we are the only people that have not tasted it before and it will then touch people." 

But if you go into your bedrooms and stay and you are not in the party that makes the masquerade, I don’t know how you can come and say, ‘put the masquerade on me."

He added that said politics is a game of numbers and one must look at the configuration of the electoral strength in Nigeria. He said most of the electoral strengths was concentrated in the North-west that has seven states of Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara and Kaduna.

So, in the South-east luckily, we have some voting strengths. We are in the neighbourhood of about eight to nine million voters now and if you have nine million votes within your kitchen and you deliver about 80 per cent of it to any presidential candidate, he will not forget.