They had in the letter requested that President Buhari should support the emergence of the presidential candidate of the ruling party from the South East specifically.
Despite undersigning a letter to President Muhammadu Buhari seeking support for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to pick its 2023 presidential candidate from the South-East, the female aspirant of the party, Barrister Uju Ken Ohanenye, stepped down and endorsed the former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu.
Ohanenye and other presidential aspirants of the APC from the South-East including Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State, former Abia State Governor, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, former Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba and Chief Ikeobasi Mokelu had sent a letter dated June 6, 2022, to President Buhari, asking him to endorse the Northern governors’ stand for power shift to the South.
They had in the letter requested that President Buhari should support the emergence of the presidential candidate of the ruling party from the South East specifically.
In the letter seen by SaharaReporters, the aspirants had said, “Your Excellency, we most humbly request that this position of our brothers from the North be deepened and made even more wholesome by further zoning position to the South-East.
“We are all aware that no president can emerge without the support of various geopolitical zones and without express collaboration of our brothers and sisters from other zones of Nigeria.
“With our convention at hand, your kind directive for the deepening of unity in diversity, championed by our founding fathers solely on the basis of strengthening national unity and cohesion and of rousing victory at the 2023 elections, are stated objectives in your speeches to the progressives governors forum, the APC aspirants dinner and the meeting of APC stakeholders.
“Furthermore, we are humbly requesting that you consider and pick your chosen candidate from the South-East aspirants in line with your stated objective of handing over to trusted party loyalists.
“We humbly seek Your Excellency's prompt and kind intervention to enable the party delegates assume proper guidance.”
However, while Nwajiuba boycotted the party’s presidential primary election at Eagle Square, Abuja, Ohanenye stepped down at the venue of the primaries and asked her supporters and delegates to vote for the APC National leader, Bola Tinubu, from the South-West.
Ohanenye who was the only female aspirant in the race was the only South East aspirant who stepped down for the South West presidential aspirant, saying “I know that Nigeria needs a mother because men have been there for the past 40 years….but after looking at the way things are going, we still need more time.”