Group labels Obi as ‘body and soul’ of Igbo in 2023 election

The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide on Wednesday described the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, as the body and soul of the Ndigbo in the 2023 presidential election.

The group was reacting to the doubt expressed by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) on the position of the South-East on the former Anambra State governor’s presidential aspiration.

The NEF Director of Publicity and Advocacy, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, had in a statement earlier in the week said the group does not know if the Ohanaeze was in support of the LP candidate’s quest for the country’s highest political office in 2023.

But in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Alex Ogbonnia, the group said Obi represents the justice and equity the people of the South-East region are seeking in Nigeria.

The Ohanaeze had last Sunday endorsed Obi as its candidate for the presidential election next year.

The statement read: “The Ohanaeze support to Obi is not because of his Igboness as rightly pointed out by Baba-Ahmed, what goes for Obi today is the awesome quality service he rendered to his people as a governor; and of course, the dispositional humility, character comeliness and intellectual acumen that define his public conducts.

“As a governor, Obi was busy setting standards of good governance for posterity, while some other myopic, timid and mundane governors were busy with the unconscionable primitive acquisition of wealth to the detriment or impoverishment of the very masses that voted them into office.

READ ALSO: 2023: Obi denies offering Kwankwaso N40bn to withdraw from presidential race

“On behalf of Ohanaeze Ndigbo and indeed all the Nigerian compatriots, we commend the Northern Elders’ Forum for stating that ‘we will give our support to the best man who can heal the wounds in the land because actually, everybody in Nigeria is marginalized right now.

“While our ugly past has been defined by selfishness, greed, injustice, ethnic and religious sentiments, the enlightened Nigerian youths of today are more imaginative, proactive, creative, rational and cosmopolitan.

“The prevailing poverty and hardship do not recognise the boundaries of ethnicity and religion. Therefore, Nigeria is at a critical juncture with a choice between our characteristic vicious circle on the one hand and the virtuous circle annotated with wealth creation and sustainable national development on the other.”

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