A former President of the Nigerian Senate, Anyim Pius Anyim, has said that nobody from the Southeast will become President of Nigeria without an alliance with other regions.
Anyim said this was the reason he left the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to join the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Ahead of the 2027 general elections, Anyim is one of the Southeast politicians who have joined the ruling party and declared their support for President Bola Tinubu’s second term.
The presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, Peter Obi, from the Southeast, is one of the most popular contenders in the forthcoming presidential election.
However, Anyim believes that the region should wait until the next 12 years, when the zoning arrangement will return to the South.
He told Arise News: “The President is entitled to a second term; after his term, the rotation goes to the North, and then it will come to the Southeast. You need to support others so they will support you.”
Speaking further, Anyim said: “Before I joined APC, you would ask me why APC. I weighed the fact that when we worked together, I mean the aspirants, our primary interest was our zone.
“So, in choosing which party to go to, I had to weigh the party that would serve that primary interest. The experience we gathered from that process, from that context, the experience I personally gathered, is that no person from the Southeast would make it in isolation.
“We must have an alliance with other regions in order to make it. So, there is no amount of effort from each and every one of us that will make it possible for us to become president if we do not have an alliance with other regions.
“It is the same thing with every other region. So, I now decided that, look, APC is best serving that interest, and when I considered that APC would serve that interest better, I joined APC.
“The President has taken it from the Southwest. After his second term, I believe in rotation. Of course, it will go to the North. Then, after the North, it will come down. In other words, after eight years, it will come down to the Southeast.”
2027: No amount of solo effort will make someone from Southeast become president – Anyim