A political group, APC South East Renaissance Group (ASERG), has advised the ruling APC to redress the “political errors” of the 2015 elections by zoning speakership of the 9th House of Representatives to the South East.
ASERG’s convener, Chris-Lance Onyemechara, who spoke yesterday at a press conference in Abuja in company of the co-convener, Prince Magnus Okeke, advised the APC to embrace politics of inclusion.
Onyemechara called on party members from other geo-political zones jostling for the speakership of the House of Representatives to withdraw from the race and support the South East in the interest of fairness, justice and equity.
He said the APC denied the South East principal offices in 2015 on grounds that it did not have ranking members, but added that, “Four years after, we have produced two ranking members and now our party seems set to shift the goal post again.
“The politics of exclusion did not work, why don’t we try the politics of inclusion? And under the circumstance, the best way to start is to zone the speakership of the House of Representatives to the South East,”
He added that, “In the 2015 presidential election, the APC polled a total of 198, 248 votes from across the five states of the South East, while in 2019, it bagged a total of 403,958 votes from the same region. This eloquently speaks of loyalty and commitment.
“We so passionately wish to change the narrative that APC is unpopular in the South East. But we need encouragement; we need to be able to show our people that this party really means well for our region.
“In this regard, the speakership of the House of Representatives will indeed suffice. I believe our great party would have taken home some lessons from the 2019 general elections to make amends and build a stronger party for the 2023 polls.”
“It is common knowledge that if the APC government had taken the South East into confidence and integrated them into the centre through strategic positioning of members of the party from the South East, the 2019 elections would have been a walk in the park for our party. Our party has another opportunity to begin the process of redressing the political errors of the last election.”
