2023: Orji Uzor Kalu wants Presidency zoned to South-East

Chief Whip of the Senate, Sen. Orji Uzor Kalu (APC-Abia), has called on the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to consider a South-east candidate as its Presidential flagbearer ahead of its National Convention.

Kalu, a former Governor of Abia, made the call while speaking to newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday.

He said that as far as the party is zoning the presidential ticket to the south, the southeast should take preference to anybody else that was trying to run.

On his ambition to run for president, Kalu said “I’m the most prepared presidential candidate in Nigeria. I’m capable health-wise, I’m capable to face anybody but our party, the APC, is supreme. I only wait for APC as a party”.

“However, I am a loyal party member, if the party decides to zone it to another zone, I will still support the candidate, but I am appealing to our Party to consider a President of the South-East extraction in 2023,” he said.

While reacting to the interest of the National Leader of the APC, Mr Bola Tinubu, to contest for president, the lawmaker said while he has nothing against the aspiration of Tinubu, he believed that the south-east is ripe for the presidency.

“I don’t see Tinubu’s ambition having any effect on the president of Nigeria coming from Igbos.

“We are talking based on how Nigeria should be, we are talking who people should believe in.

“No igbo man since independence has been democratically elected as president,” he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Tinubu had on Monday, told newsmen of his intention to contest in the 2023 presidential poll after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja.