Ohaneze Youth Council threatens shutdown on election day of APC and PDP deny Ndigbo presidential tickets

OHANEZE Youth Council, (OYC) has warned the All Progressive Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that it will call for a total shutdown across the southeast geo-political zone next February if they both deny Ndigbo their presidential tickets.

Although not constitutional, Nigeria's component parts have a gentleman's agreement that the presidency will rotate between the north and the south of the country. President Muhammadu Buhari's tenure will end in 2023 and being a Fulani northern Muslim, it is expected that the next president will come from southern Nigeria.

Since the return to democracy in 1999, the southwest has produced President Olusegun Obasanjo and the south-south President Goodluck Jonathan, so come 2023, the presidency should automatically go to the southeast. However, neither of Nigeria's two main political parties has zoned the presidency to the southeast and candidates from all the other five geo-political zones are running for president.

With the possibility of neither the PDP or APC producing an Igbo presidential candidate, the OYC has warned that there will be a total lockdown in Igboland on February 25 2023, the day of the presidential and National Assembly elections. OYC president Igboayaka O Igboayaka and its acting national secretary Ifeanyi Nweke, issued a joint statement to this effect.

They said: "There will be no access road to distribute electoral materials in any polling unit in Igboland. If the powers-that-be in Nigeria can’t give the southeast the presidency when it is duly our turn to rule the country, then Igbos will peacefully have no other option than to leave this union called Nigeria.

“We want to use this medium to advise Ndigbo living in the northern parts of Nigeria to immediately start taking their security very serious if the APC and PDP deny southeast presidential aspirants. They should start to make adequate arrangements for their return back home.

“The world should bear in mind that this orchestrated conspiracy against the southeast is overdue, we cannot take it any longer as the struggle for the emancipation of our people starts now. The experiences of the southeast and how the region has been treated since the end of the 1966-1970 genocide suggests that the southeast is not part of Nigeria."