Ebonyi State governor, David Umahi has said that God’s anointing is needed for the Igbo to produce the president of Nigeria in 2023.
Governor Umahi, who is the chairman of the South-East governors’ forum, said this yesterday, after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.
There has been an increasing agitation for President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor to come from the region.
“We need God’s own anointing for our own anointed president for the interests and unity of this country,” Umahi said to newsmen yesterday, at the Presidential Villa, after a meeting with President Buhari.
He was responding to a question from a reporter who asked him if, as the chairman of the South-East governors’ forum, he was going to put pressure on the two major political parties – the All Progressives Congress, (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) – to pick their presidential candidates from the South-East.
“My position about what you ask is that our people that are in those political parties are making the effort in selling the need for the south-east to produce the next president”, the governor stated.
Umahi, however, said power rests in the hands of God.
The governor, apparently trying to play down on the issue, said he was much more interested in completing the infrastructural projects his administration was handling in Ebonyi State.
He said the second Niger Bridge and railway line that passes through some of the South-East states as part of President Buhari’s efforts at “restoring that hope” in the region.
Gov. Umahi’s defection last year from the main opposition party, the PDP, to the ruling APC has heightened speculations that he wants to run for president in 2023.
Some Nigerians believe the current agitation for an independent republic of Biafra would easily fizzle out if an Igbo person becomes the president in 2023.
