Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State has called on the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to decide on which geo-political zone gets its 2023 presidential ticket.
There has been agitation among chieftains of the party over which zone should produce the presidential candidate of the party in 2023 when the second term of President Muhammadu Buhari will lapse.
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Umahi defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling APC in November last year, citing injustice in his former party. Though he said he did not join the ruling party over presidential ambition, reports kept filtering from political circles that he is eyeing the seat of Buhari, come 2023.
Umahi stated the demand at an interview with newsmen after visiting the Chairman of the APC Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee at the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja on Wednesday.
“It (zoning) is a party affair. Party discipline requires that you sit down and discuss issues. You advance your reasons and another person will also advance his. And then the party as a family will take a position,” he said.
The governor also demanded the party’s top echelon to transmit more registration forms to the South East.
This, he said, followed the shortage of forms in the region in the on-going nationwide membership registration and revalidation exercise of the party.
He explained that many Nigerians in the South-East were in a “mad rush” to get registered because of what he described as President Buhari’s giant strides in the region.
“I complained to him (Buni) that the hundreds of forms at the polling units are a far cry from what we expected. Everybody in the South-East wants to belong to the APC.
“The ongoing registration, arrangements and logistics and the intentions are very wonderful. It is first class because I have never seen it in any party administration,” he said.
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