Former Minister of Education, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili has said that the growing call for a Nigerian President from the South East is legitimate.
The former Vice President of the World Bank said that the emergence of a Nigerian President from the region which has never produced the President would give the region a sense of reintegration.
Ezekwesili made the comments while speaking at AIT early morning Programme, Kakaaki, monitored by our correspondent on Wednesday.
She said that the mere fact alone that a politician comes from a particular part of the country should qualify him or her to become the president of the country.
The former Minister of Solid Minerals stressed that it is not proper to sustain a pattern that a particular part of the country is ignored in the sensitive issue of the production of a leader for the country.
She said, “The demand for a Nigerian President from the South East is a very legitimate demand because in this multi-ethnic states if a people will have the sense that they are part of a country, and a particular approach is taken at ensuring that sense of belonging; if it is almost a pattern that a certain part of the country is ignored in the equation, it begins to raise the kind of question that people raise.
“So, I do think that the aspiration of the South East to produce a President for Nigeria, not a South-East President, a President for Nigeria is a legitimate aspiration.”
She stressed that even advanced countries of the West such as Switzerland and Germany are sensitive enough to make room for inclusion and geographical balancing.
Ezekwesili said that Nigerians should have a conversation and restructure even before the 2023 general elections.
According to her, the primary issue in m should not even be which region should produce the next pResident but a focus on the economy and the security of the country. Ezekwesili lamented that Nigeria has lost everything that makes her a country saying “the country has not been able to transit from country to nation and from nation to a developed society because of poor leadership.”