The Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, Femi Adesina says people of the Southeast region of Nigeria are not playing the right politics, advising them to “align with the rest of the country”.
POLITICS NIGERIA reports that south easterners are pushing to occupy the seat in Aso Rock Villa in 2023, ‘to be given a sense of belonging’. Now, Adesina advises them “to re-address their politics” if they want to be successful in their quest to produce Nigeria’s next President.
“Every part of the country deserves to produce the president and right from my days in the newspapers, I had always been writing, advising the south east on how to get it. But till now, I wouldn’t say they have played the proper kind of politics,” Adesina said in a recent interview with Vanguard.
Asked what “proper kind of politics” he meant, the erstwhile President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) responded: “To become president in Nigeria, you need to align with the rest of the country and if you don’t align, you can never produce a President. President Buhari had to align with the south west before he became President. If the south east continues to vote the same way they have been voting in one direction and that direction is not working, yet they continue, then, they need to re-address their politics.
“Before 2015 and then, 2019, some Igbo leaders of thoughts, Orji Kalus, Ngiges, Ralp Obioha, all of them, even at a point, Prof ABC Nwosu said it. That was in 2011. He said the shortest route to Igbo presidency is to vote the Buhari/Bakere ticket in 2011 and then, Buhari/Osinbajo ticket in 2015 and 2019. But how did the south east vote, they still went in the same direction,” he said.
