News making rounds, indicates that the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, has concluded plans to pick the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, as the Presidential candidate, ahead of 2023, in order to compensate the Igbos for been marginalised.
This came as the Northern APC chieftains have started reaching out to the Igbos, to drop there agitation for Biafra, and support a Northern candidacy, ahead of the 2019 elections.
Post-Nigeria recalled, that often Okorocha has repeatedly told his South-Eastern brothers agitating for an Igbo Presidency in 2019, to hold on till 2023, by allowing the North to have its eight years.
Sources close to the Governor, revealed that if Okorocha’s antecedents are anything to go by, he is likely to join the race for 2019, to position himself for 2023, when it is believed that power would shift to the South-East.
Post-Nigeria further recalled, that in 2015, Okorocha had joined the presidential race, even when the APC made it clear that its Presidential ticket was zoned to the North.
”Despite calls then for him to jettison the Presidential ambition, he went ahead to contest the APC Presidential primaries, and Okorocha came fourth, with 624 votes in 2015.
”Now that he would be completing his second term, and has not indicated that he would run for the Senate as has become the tradition for outgoing Governors, it would not be out of place for him to take another shot at the Presidency, even if it fails to fly.
”Such attempt to earn him the sympathy of party delegates in future, if the APC zones its Presidential ticket to the South or South-East.
“He may be considered on the ground of consistency, like the party did in the case of Buhari in 2015,” the source said.
However, another source added that if the APC eventually zoned its Presidency to the South-East in 2023, the party might settle for Okorocha, because of his vast knowledge and exposure in politics.
