Nigeria’s Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige says the National Leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress , Asiwaju Bola Tinubu cannot dislodge the agitations for the emergence of an Igbo person as Nigeria’s president in 2023.

Addressing newsmen in Awka, Anambra State over the weekend, Ngige said Tinubu has the constitutional right to contest the 2023 presidential poll which he said the APC had technically ceded to the South-East region.

The Minister however insisted that except the presidency decides otherwise, there was little or nothing Tinubu could do about the arrangement.

He therefore called on all Igbos to support and vote for President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 presidential election as there were favourable indications that he would win and support an Igbo person to succeed him.

The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, had last week accused Tinubu of supporting Buhari’s re-election bid because of a presumed 2023 presidential ambition, which he said was against the APC’s position that the presidency would be zoned to the South-East in 2023.

Ngige added that only Buhari’s presidency in 2019 could guarantee Igbo presidency in 2023, especially when Buhari remained the only northerner that would relinquish power after the next four years.

“Politics is a game of numbers and if you look at the configuration of the electoral strength in Nigeria, you will see that most of the electoral strength is concentrated in the North West that has seven states of Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara and Kaduna and their voting strength, if anything, has increased from what it was in 2015.

“If you remember in 2015 election, Kano alone gave two million votes to Buhari and Katsina gave nearly one million. So, all I’m trying to say is that the configuration of the election patterns in 2015 have not changed in terms of strength.

“In the South East, we are in the neighbourhood of about eight to nine million voters. The South West has about 12 to 13 million and the  last time, they delivered 55 per cent of their votes to Buhari while Jonathan got about 50 per cent or thereabout.

“So, I am saying in effect that you must do political engineering in the South East and step up to support a Buhari presidency for 2019/2023, and vote for it with all your strengths. By so doing, they will not be left out in the power sharing that will come thereafter.

“By voting for Buhari, Igbos will get strategic positions in government. They will also even get into the kitchen cabinet of the presidency. There is no government that doesn’t have a kitchen cabinet.

“Number two, it will be easy for an out-going president to find joy in doing an equitable nomination of somebody from the South-East to say, this person or these persons are fit and proper persons to succeed me and he can even canvass, based on equity to say that the South-East is the only zone in Nigeria that has not tasted this presidency and people will listen, both on moral grounds and on the basis of equity.

“It is obvious that any other Northerner elected in 2019 will go for eight years of the presidency and so, 2023 will not be feasible for any other zone. Do not mind what Atiku Abubakar is saying that he will do only one term. It’s not possible. It’s political talk,” Ngige said.

He continued:  “As far as I am concerned, Asiwaju has the right to aspire. He is a human being. All of us have our ambitions. He has the right to aspire after all, he aspired to the post of Vice-President.

“You can’t kill people’s ambitions. We are in politics to serve and if you feel you can serve in a very high office, you should aspire to go there.

“It is left for those who are politicking with you to also square up and do their own work if they feel it is their turn so that they will be more acceptable than you. Power is not served alacarte. You must struggle for it.

“So, on moral grounds, on basis of equity, it will be the turn of the South-East. South-East must step out to say it is our turn with enough punch and convincing reasons.”