JAMES KWEN examines ways and political moves by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his political party, the All Progressives Congress, to break a 13-year defeat of the party in the South-East region of the country come 2027.
Since the All Progressives Congress (APC) emerged as a political party in 2013, it has never won a presidential election in the South-East geopolitical zone.
In its first outing at the 2015 general election, APC’s candidate, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, lost the zone to the then President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
While Buhari still lost the South East to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in the 2019 polls, Bola Tinubu, the APC candidate for the 2023 presidential race, was defeated in the zone by a former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, the then Labour Party (LP) flag-bearer.
Ahead of the 2027 polls, the trio of Tinubu, Atiku and Obi would still be on the same ballot for APC, African Democratic Congress (ADC) and NDC, respectively.
The incumbent president has made several inroads in the South East, which may disrupt the political trajectory, like having three states controlled by his party -Imo, Ebonyi and Enugu, leaving LP and APGA with Abia and Anambra.
However, Obi’s NDC and Atiku’s ADC are not governing any state in the zone or the entire country. At the same time, APGA, which controls Anambra, has adopted Tinubu as its presidential candidate, and the governor, Professor Charles Soludo, is openly working for the president.
Also, no less a personality than the Chairman of the South-East Governors Forum (SEGF) and Imo State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodimma, is currently at the forefront of President Tinubu’s re-election campaign.
Uzodimma, who is also the Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), is the Director-General and National Coordinator of the Renewed Hope Ambassadors (RHA), the main vehicle for President Tinubu’s second-term re-election campaign.
The Tinubu and APC’s penetration of the South East geopolitical zone was brought to the fore during a recent inspection tour of federal government projects, organised by Renewed Hope Ambassadors in collaboration with the Presidential Media Team.
During the tour, the Minister of Works and Housing, Senator David Umahi, said the people of the state will vote for President Tinubu massively in the 2027 general election, as he described the results of the 2023 polls, which Obi, then of LP, won in Ebonyi, as an accident of history.
The former Ebonyi governor said that, with the massive infrastructure transformation of the Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda in the state and the entire South East region, he has endeared himself to the people, who will reciprocate by voting for him.
The minister said the Calabar-Ebonyi-Benue Trans-Saharan Superhighway is one of the flagship projects expected to transform economic activities across the South-East, South-South and parts of the North-Central region.
“It is a colonial-era dream long forgotten, but President Tinubu has revived it, and construction is now underway. We must thank him immensely,” said Umahi.
He stated that Section One of the highway, originally designed as a 118-kilometre stretch but later extended to 123.6 kilometres, is being executed at a cost of N45 billion, with dualisation works progressing steadily.
Umahi said Section Two, which runs from Benue and Kogi states to Nasarawa, has been awarded for N668 billion and has reached about 28 per cent completion in some sections.
“The Trans-Sahara Superhighway is not just a road; it is an investment corridor that will catalyse trade in agricultural produce such as cassava, yam, cashew and palm oil from Cross River, Benue and Ebonyi, and connect Nigeria to Cameroon.”
To buttress that Ebonyi and the entire zone are not for Obi but Tinubu, Umahi said: “Let it be known that Ebonyi state is not ‘Obidient’ because we want to catch up with the rest of the country.
“We will never be part of the Obedient, and what happened before was an accident of history that will never repeat itself. In the past, Ebonyi never had any federal government project.
“I was a party chairman for five years, deputy governor for four years, and governor for eight years, and I never saw any federal government project in Ebonyi state. So, we have every reason to be obedient to President Tinubu, him and him alone,” added.
Followers of Obi refer to themselves as ‘obidients.’ It is a name coined from the surname of the former governor of Anambra State.
Umahi and the team further inspected the N35 billion Onueke Flyover project in Ebonyi Central Senatorial District, designed to ease traffic congestion along the corridor, as well as the completed concrete-pavement link road connecting communities in Ebonyi and Cross River states.
For his part, Enekwachi Akpa, Managing Director of Age Link Group, which is handling the 90-metre Onueke flyover, said the company is committed to completing the project to reciprocate Tinubu’s love for the South East, which would be consummated in the 2027 polls.
“This place is a serious catchment area for APC. This is Ebonyi Central, and this project has changed because of the people. “They are very happy. They are very appreciative of this project. And by 2027, you will see the result,” he said.
Speaking when he received the media delegation in Abakaliki, the governor of Ebonyi state, Francis Nwifuru, said his administration, keying into Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, has executed a minimum of five landmark projects in every Local Government Area of the state, which cut across roads, primary healthcare centres and water schemes.
“There is no local government that you will not see our projects. You can see that even the local government is doing projects -some did 2-3 kilometres. Some did 4 kilometres, others did between 4 and 5 kilometres. You are also going to see it,” he said.
The team visited several projects of the Governor Nwifuru’s administration, including the Vanco Flyover and Tunnel project in Abakaliki, designed to relieve severe traffic congestion along the Ogoja Road; the 23km Ezillo-Ezzagu road in Ishielu local government and the 24km NigerCem road in Ohaukwu local government area.
Others were 140 three-bedroom bungalows in Izu-Amaeze, built to resettle victims and families displaced by past communal conflict; 140-unit four-bedroom duplexes for deserving civil/public servants; and the conversion of a 10-storey Ebonyi Trade Centre in Abakaliki into a state-owned hotel.
In Enugu, the lawmaker representing Enugu West, Senator Osita Ngwu, declared that under the administration of Tinubu, the South East geopolitical zone no longer feels marginalised, as it now occupies key positions and infrastructure transformation is taking place across the axis.
Some of the key federal projects inspected in Enugu include the completed 23-span Eke Obinagu Flyover Bridge on the Enugu-Abakaliki Expressway, the rehabilitation of the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway and the ongoing Abakpa Interchange project.
The Senator said the Eke Obinagu Flyover Bridge on the Enugu-Abakaliki Expressway had addressed a longstanding transportation challenge along the corridor linking Ebonyi and Enugu states.
Osita noted that the rehabilitation of the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway had drastically reduced travel time, cutting a journey that once took five to six hours on deteriorating roads to just over two hours.
Ngwu said perceptions that the South-East had been sidelined by the federal government no longer reflected realities on the ground.
