JAMES KWEN examines ways and political moves by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his political party, the All Progressives Congress, to break a 13-year defeat of the party in the South-East region of the country come 2027.
Since the All Progressives Congress (APC) emerged as a political party in 2013, it has never won a presidential election in the South-East geopolitical zone.
In its first outing at the 2015 general election, APC’s candidate, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, lost the zone to the then President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
While Buhari still lost the South East to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in the 2019 polls, Bola Tinubu, the APC candidate for the 2023 presidential race, was defeated in the zone by a former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, the then Labour Party (LP) flag-bearer.
Ahead of the 2027 polls, the trio of Tinubu, Atiku and Obi would still be on the same ballot for APC, African Democratic Congress (ADC) and NDC, respectively.
The incumbent president has made several inroads in the South East, which may disrupt the political trajectory, like having three states controlled by his party -Imo, Ebonyi and Enugu, leaving LP and APGA with Abia and Anambra.
However, Obi’s NDC and Atiku’s ADC are not governing any state in the zone or the entire country. At the same time, APGA, which controls Anambra, has adopted Tinubu as its presidential candidate, and the governor, Professor Charles Soludo, is openly working for the president.
Also, no less a personality than the Chairman of the South-East Governors Forum (SEGF) and Imo State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodimma, is currently at the forefront of President Tinubu’s re-election campaign.
Uzodimma, who is also the Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), is the Director-General and National Coordinator of the Renewed Hope Ambassadors (RHA), the main vehicle for President Tinubu’s second-term re-election campaign.
The Tinubu and APC’s penetration of the South East geopolitical zone was brought to the fore during a recent inspection tour of federal government projects, organised by Renewed Hope Ambassadors in collaboration with the Presidential Media Team.
During the tour, the Minister of Works and Housing, Senator David Umahi, said the people of the state will vote for President Tinubu massively in the 2027 general election, as he described the results of the 2023 polls, which Obi, then of LP, won in Ebonyi, as an accident of history.
The former Ebonyi governor said that, with the massive infrastructure transformation of the Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda in the state and the entire South East region, he has endeared himself to the people, who will reciprocate by voting for him.
The minister said the Calabar-Ebonyi-Benue Trans-Saharan Superhighway is one of the flagship projects expected to transform economic activities across the South-East, South-South and parts of the North-Central region.
“It is a colonial-era dream long forgotten, but President Tinubu has revived it, and construction is now underway. We must thank him immensely,” said Umahi.
He stated that Section One of the highway, originally designed as a 118-kilometre stretch but later extended to 123.6 kilometres, is being executed at a cost of N45 billion, with dualisation works progressing steadily.
Umahi said Section Two, which runs from Benue and Kogi states to Nasarawa, has been awarded for N668 billion and has reached about 28 per cent completion in some sections.
“The Trans-Sahara Superhighway is not just a road; it is an investment corridor that will catalyse trade in agricultural produce such as cassava, yam, cashew and palm oil from Cross River, Benue and Ebonyi, and connect Nigeria to Cameroon.”
To buttress that Ebonyi and the entire zone are not for Obi but Tinubu, Umahi said: “Let it be known that Ebonyi state is not ‘Obidient’ because we want to catch up with the rest of the country.
“We will never be part of the Obedient, and what happened before was an accident of history that will never repeat itself. In the past, Ebonyi never had any federal government project.
“I was a party chairman for five years, deputy governor for four years, and governor for eight years, and I never saw any federal government project in Ebonyi state. So, we have every reason to be obedient to President Tinubu, him and him alone,” added.
