By Tony Adibe
A former chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Dr. Sam Amadi, has said that Ndiigbo could focus their energy and resources on the economic growth of SouthEast, and strengthen its influence across Nigeria and the entire world.
Dr. Amadi said such action seemed much better and more impactful than the chase after Nigeria’s Presidency that appears quite elusive to presidential aspirants from Igbo states.
“Maybe SE has no chance at all, whether in 2027, 2031, or 2035, just as Jews never have in the US. We can focus on building SE and prospering across Nigeria and the world,” he wrote. Amadi, the policy expert, also questioned the real value of the Nigerian presidency, describing it as an avenue for personal enrichment and stealing public resources.
“By the way, what has been the worth of the Nigerian presidency? Just another opportunity for some people to steal a varnishing wealth as they are doing now,” Amadi added.
NewsBits recalls that the struggle for Nigerian President of Igbo origin has been on for decades – right from the time Dr Alex Ekwueme made efforts to clinch the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 1998 to when Ikemba Emeka Ojukwu contested on the platform of APGA and came third, and in 2023 when Mr. Peter Obi ran on the platform of the Labour Party, backed by the Obidient Movement, and made a tremendous impact on Nigeria’s political space.
Recall also that before the 2023 presidential election, there was a push for the major political parties to zone the position to the South-East just as it was done in 1998 where the major contenders were Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP and Olu False of the AD. But all those efforts didn’t bear fruit, apparently due to Nigeria’s political intrigues and manipulations.
A key aspirant for the presidency in 2027, Mr Peter Obi has been pledging to do only a single term if elected and hand over to someone from the North. But Amadi argued that based on current realities, the region may never attain the position.
Amadi, writing on X on Friday, said the South-East might have no realistic path to the presidency in 2027, 2031, or even 2035. He advised that the region should instead focus on economic growth and strengthening its influence across Nigeria and globally. Amadi’s comments came in response to an earlier post by X user, Demola Olarewaju, who argued that the South-East has never had a clear pathway to the presidency since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999.
According to Olaewaju, while the South-West has produced presidents through both nationalist and regional political strategies, the South-South only got an opportunity by “chance or fate,” leaving the South-East without similar prospects.
“Not my place to say, and I won’t.
“I’ll just add that a Yoruba has two pathways to the Presidency in Nigeria since 1999:
“You can be a nationalist like Obasanjo and win; you can still be an ethnocentrism like Tinubu and win. SS got a chance by mistake/fate, SE has never,” Olarewaju wrote.”
