By Jude Atupulazi
For more than six decades since Independence, Nigeria has perfected a strange ritual: every election season, we remember the South-East.
We remember that the Igbo, one of the three major pillars on which Nigeria stands, has not produced an elected President in the current democratic era. We remember that since Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s ceremonial presidency in the First Republic, no Igbo man or woman has held executive power at the very top. Then we move on.
It has become Nigeria’s longest political queue.
A History of Near-Misses
The facts are stark. Since 1999, the unwritten zoning arrangement has rotated power between North and South-West, North and South-South, North and South-West again. The South-East has watched.
This is not for lack of candidates. In 2003, in 2007, in 2019, in 2023, Igbo politicians ran, negotiated, built alliances and stepped down in some cases. The argument always returns: “You cannot win alone.” True. No ethnic group can win alone in Nigeria. But the question the Igbo ask is simple — if alliance-building is required, why is an alliance with the South-East always the one that must wait?
The wounds of the Nigeria Civil War still shape this. For 30 months between 1967 and 1970, the East fought to leave Nigeria. Since 1970, the East has been told to prove it wants to stay. Every Igbo presidential aspirant carries that extra burden: he must not only convince voters he can govern, he must convince them his people have been sufficiently reintegrated.
Three Excuses That No Longer Hold
- “The Igbo are too divided.” Nigerian politics is division. The North is not monolithic. The South-West is not monolithic. Division is not an Igbo peculiarity, it is the Nigerian condition. Yet other zones manage to present a common front when it matters.
- “They don’t have the numbers.” No zone has the numbers alone. The presidency has never been won by numbers, but by negotiation across zones. The South-East brings 5 states, but also brings the largest trading networks, a diaspora that remits billions, and a voting population in every major city in Nigeria – from Lagos to Kano to Port Harcourt.
- “Let the best candidate win, not zoning.” Merit is important. But we have practiced zoning since 1999 because we agreed Nigeria is too fragile for raw meritocracy without inclusion. You cannot invoke merit only when the South-East’s turn comes, and invoke zoning for everyone else.
What the Wait Has Cost
The endless wait has done damage on both sides. In the South-East, it has fed a deep cynicism among young people. If voting never brings the top prize closer, why vote? That cynicism is the oxygen for separatist rhetoric. IPOB did not emerge in a vacuum; it emerged where political faith was thinnest.
For Nigeria, the cost is the loss of a powerful narrative. A President of Igbo extraction elected by Nigerians across the North, West and South would do more for national unity than a thousand National Orientation Agency jingles. It would finally close the chapter that began on January 15, 1966. It would tell every child in Aba and Nnewi that Nigeria is not just where they live, but theirs to lead.
2027 and Beyond
Will 2027 be different? The Catholic Bishops calling for prayer ahead of 2027, the Anglican crisis in Awka – both remind us that moral authority is shifting from political actors to institutions that people still trust. Nigerians are tired of rigging, vote-buying and ethno-religious division.
An Igbo presidency will not solve insecurity, fix the naira, or pave our roads. No single presidency will. But symbols matter in a country as fractured as ours. The presidency is not just an administrative job; it is a symbol of who belongs.
The Igbo have waited at the door of Aso Rock for 26 years of this Republic, knocking politely, sometimes loudly, often angrily. At some point, Nigeria must decide whether it wants to keep them waiting outside – or invite them inside to share responsibility for the house we all claim to own.
The wait cannot be endless forever, especially at this time the Southeast has arguably the best candidate running for the seat of president in Peter Obi. Many times, it has been stressed that Obi is not a saint, no mortal is; but when compared to the others running with him, Obi looks very much saintly.
And Obi is the candidate that commands the greatest national appeal. He is seen as the saviour by the long suffering masses of this country. This is because they have weighed the others and found them full of blemish. There’s no ordinary Nigerian today that is in love with the state of affairs in the country except those eating at the Nigerian table.
The incumbent government of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu has inflicted great injury on Nigerians and it has not mattered where one comes from. It is like dust thrown in the air. It will surely settle on everyone at that place, regardless of whether it was they that threw it up or not. That is how the Nigerian situation is to everybody. Even those who eat at the table are suffering the backlash of bad leadership.
If they doubt this, let them embark on a journey by road. If they don’t run into marauding bandits, they may run into kidnappers, and these kidnappers are not going to distinguish between the leaders and the led. If anything, it is the leaders that they will see as better targets as they will make more money from them. So who is actually safe?
This is why the real Nigerians want the best, no matter where they come from and in Peter Obi, they see that best. His Igbo background is no longer the issue as those from other favoured backgrounds have been tried in the past and they failed.
But despite the mass appeal that Obi has, some people are still going about shouting that it is not yet the time for an Igbo man to become president. They have even forgotten the simple formula that has been determining who guns for the number one seat of the nation: zoning.
Every major zone has had a crack at the presidency except the Southeast. Even the seat currently occupied by Tinubu should have been occupied by a person from the Southeast because before then Obasanjo from the West had gone; Jonathan from the South-South had gone; and Buhari from the North had gone. But even in those periods these same people had been saying it wasn’t the turn of the Igbo man.
One then is constrained to ask, ”When will it ever be the turn of the Igbo man?’
Well, we all know the reason for the selling out of our people by own people. It is always either for our own selfish ambitions or for choice appointments. Sometimes these people are deceived into believing that they would be given something, just as one Southeast governor has been made to believe that he would get the Vice Presidency, not knowing that they see him as an expendable bullet that will be replaced at the appropriate time after he has served his purpose. For now, they must be laughing behind him for his naivety as he twerks for them and joins in shouting that it is not the turn of an Igbo man to be president.
Ndigbo, onye medulu unu ifea? Ndo nu!
