President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday said he believed that the Igbo had the right to the Presidency and promised to back Igbo Presidency at “the |right time.”
He, however, solicited the support of the Igbo for his re-election bid in 2019, saying next year’s general elections would determine the future of the country.
Buhari, who spoke in Owerri, the Imo State capital, during a “mega rally” by his party, All Progressives Congress, South-East Zone, said that the elections were “make or mar” for the Igbo.
Represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, Buhari pleaded with Ndigbo to support his reelection ambition in 2019.
“The 2019 election is not about political parties; it is about the Igbo nation. You need a paradigm shift; it will determine the future of this country,” the President said.
The APC National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, said four years was not enough for Buhari to deliver on all his campaign promises.
Ostensibly referring to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Oshiomhole said: “for letter writers, we are happy that their evil plan of the third term did not work.”
“I thank Senator Ken Nnamani who held the Senate and made sure that there is no third tenure. For 16 years, the PDP destroyed this country,” he said.
According to him, judging by performance, Buhari deserves a second term in office.
Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State assured Buhari that the South-East zone would vote massively for him in 2019.
Meanwhile, the PDP has described APC’s Tuesday’s South-East zonal rally as a mockery on Buhari by the members of his party.
The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said Nigerians had a comic relief as speaker after speaker made a mockery of the President by ascribing non-existent projects as well as those initiated by others, particularly, the PDP, to him in furtherance of APC’s alleged renewed attempt to beguile Nigerians ahead of 2019 general elections.
According to him, the crowd at the APC rally was rented.
Ologbondiyan said, “Even the rented crowd showed and expressed a vote of no confidence in the ill-performed President and his party, as they refused to brandish the now famished APC brooms or respond to the party’s slogan, a development that signposts the rejection of the APC in the zone and of course, in other parts of our nation.
