Despite bold efforts by its leaders, hopes that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) would deepen its acceptability in the South-East region ahead of the 2027 elections continue to fade due to the inaction of the party, LAWRENCE NJOKU reports.

It is becoming clearer by each passing day that unless the South-East region buries its presidential aspiration and supports President Bola Tinubu’s second term bid, the quest by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to improve its electoral fortunes in the zone during the 2027 elections may remain like a whisper in the wind.

Investigations by The Guardian show that despite the impressive showing of the party so far, it is not yet at home with the people of the region. In the main, stakeholders blame the attitude and leadership style of the President for the lack of empathy by the South-East electorate.

The establishment of the Southeast Development Commission (SEDC) stands out as the most outstanding gesture from the APC–led government. Both the party and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu received and continue to receive commendations for establishing the commission as a means of tackling the long years of infrastructure neglect after the war.

Prior to the setting up of the SEDC, stakeholders from the zone had for long agitated for the creation of such a body to address the infrastructure and other challenges confronting the region. However, what has come as its own goal to defray that major point is the skewed manner of appointments and award of contracts by the Tinubu-led Federal Government.

It is popularly held in the zone that the South-East does not count for the APC. As such, this imbalance is making it difficult for the party and its faithful to widen its acceptability.

Blast from the past
In 2023, the region had voted against APC and its candidate, incumbent President Tinubu, who contested against one of its sons, Mr Peter Obi.

While Obi, who stood on one of the fringe political parties, Labour Party (LP), secured about 1,960,590 votes, Tinubu’s party posted only 127,607 votes, not minding that APC controls two out of the five states in the region.

Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, never won in any of the election cycles while he contested the Presidency. In 2015, Buhari secured only 198,248 votes, which culminated in his loss to Goodluck Jonathan by a wide margin of above two million votes. In 2019, even as the incumbent President, the APC standard bearer got 403,968 votes as he lost to Atiku Abubakar, who polled over one million votes in the region.

However, when placed side by side with the performance of Buhari, especially in the first election that gave him victory in 2015, it could be said that his (Buhari) performance was better than that of Tinubu in the region even when the party (APC) was contesting in a major election for the first time that year after a successful merger.

It is this not-too-impressive run in the region that APC chieftains planned to wipe out with the 2027 elections. But, whether that would happen with the way and manner the Presidency has carried on in matters affecting the region, remains a subject of conjecture.

Last week, when the Presidency announced an eight-member presidential committee on the 2025 National Population and Housing Census, the list was without any known names from either the South-East or South/South. Nonetheless, the same list showed that the South-West, President Tinubu’s region, hosted five members, while the North Central and North-West got two and one slots respectively.

Murmuring and sulking
No sooner was the list made public than a rash of condemnations trailed it by the Igbo, who had not only seen it as a grand perpetuation of marginalisation of the zone, but also as a clog in the wheel of the party’s progress in the area.

The harsh rebukes, as well as similar social media rants and posts, forced the presidency to release what it called the list of actual appointments made by the Prince since he came into office in May 2023. The list also indicated that South-East had received the least number of appointments compared to “juicy” positions retained in the South-West.

The Apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, had swiftly reacted to the development, describing it as being unhealthy for the country. The umbrella social and cultural organisation of all Igbo insisted that the Presidency’s action negates the federal character principle as enshrined in the country’s constitution.

In a chat with The Guardian, the National Publicity Secretary of the organisation, Dr Ezechi Chukwu, remarked: “It is so inappropriate that the southeast has no representation in such an important technical committee with this far-reaching national assignment. Who then will give the true picture of the South-East in that committee? Is the South-East not part of corporate Nigeria?

“There is a need for President Bola Tinubu to revisit the composition of that committee for the sake of equity and national inclusiveness.”

Likewise, Igbo lawyers in Nigeria under the auspices of ‘Out Oka-Iwu’, while faulting the composition of the committee, stressed that the exclusion of the entire region indicated that “we do not matter in the affairs of this country”.

It added that the action is reprehensible and amounts to an insult to the millions of citizens from the zones that have contributed immensely to Nigeria’s development, insisting that it was a wider pattern of systemic exclusion targeting the Igbo people and their neighbours in the South-South region.

President and Secretary of the group, Okechukwu Unegbu and Ben Ihesiulo, called for the immediate reconstitution of the committee to reflect federal character, warning that failure to include qualified representatives from the regions could amount to an invitation to civil disobedience.

But, the National President of Njiko Ndigbo, Okechukwu Obioha, noted that it was in the “character” of the President Tinubu-led administration to relegate the South-East region to the background. He insisted that the region has remained the least in appointments in his government, adding that in all the projects awarded by his administration so far, none had been completed in the region.

Obioha said nothing has happened in the region to justify the continued retention of confidence in the APC-led administration, just as he promised that the South-East region would not shun its demand to produce the next President by 2027.

Assuring that his group has already kick-started mobilisation towards the realization of that dream, Obioha declared: “We will not give up. It is the turn of the south in 2027, and in the south, it is the southeast. We need a government that recognises the existence of other segments of the country.

“The other day, the Federal Government flagged off the Ebonyi superhighway connecting Cross River, Ebonyi, Benue and Abuja, without a stipulated completion time frame. It is not new, because we have always been relegated.”

Obioha’s position was that of an APC chieftain, Chief John Ogbonna, who argued that actions such as the “skewed” appointments were making it difficult for the party to deepen its acceptability in the region.

His words: “We are doing the best we can to market and deepen the party in the region, but I think we need support from the Presidency in the way they relate with the region in terms of ensuring parity in our dealings. It becomes difficult to market the party in a region that is not at peace with you because of your actions. At this stage in governance, certain deliberate actions should be put in place to woo support and interests in our party.”

“The way,” he spoke further,” those who have benefited from the government have carried on is not helping matters. We have continued to behave as if we have conquered Nigeria. We don’t reconcile grievances within the party, we don’t care about complaints and demands of the people; yet we are thinking of going back to them to solicit their votes in the next couple of months. We need to make the people happy to enable them to answer us when we call on them.”

In the recent APC gubernatorial primary in Anambra State, Ogbonna disclosed that the party continues to behave as if all was well. “Some of the contestants have left the party. One has even gone to court. But did we learn any lessons from it? Have we done anything to assuage those ill feelings, and hope to win in that election? These are the issues,” he stated

Some days ago, a foundation member and former State Chairman of the party in Enugu State, Ben Nwoye, resigned his membership, citing a lack of justice and the rule of law in the administration of the party.

Nwoye, who addressed journalists, stated that the core values for which the party was formed years ago had been abandoned, accused the national leadership of failing to live to its responsibility of calling its members to order and maintaining what he described as “willful blindness to issues” and allowing “warring factions to self-destruct and strangulate it”.

Nwoye, who reiterated that the development does not help the government, stated: “The leadership of the party in the southeast is fully engaged in vindictive politics.

They are not interested in adding another state to the two states the party controls in the southeast. As far as they are concerned, the supremacy of the party is measured by how low they can oppress their perceived political enemies. These they do, without recourse to the core principles upon which APC stands –justice, peace and unity”.

But, when the people of Okposi Okwu community in Ohaozara Local Government Area of Ebonyi State hosted a reception in his honour at the weekend, Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, said the President had put an end to the marginalisation of the South-East region in the political and infrastructural spheres.

Umahi, while praising Tinubu for ensuring a fair distribution of the benefits of democracy across the six geopolitical zones, insisted that appointing him (Umahi) as Minister of Works, a first in Nigeria’s post-independence era, represents a significant advancement in inclusivity.

He had told those who cared to listen to him that President Tinubu would receive “massive votes” from Igboland to justify the various interventions he had made in the region since coming to power in 2023.