The Labour party has said it is mobilising to ensure that there is no voter apathy in the South-East.
The party said it is making special interventions, not only in making sure that registered voters in the region get their PVCs ahead of the polls; but also making interventions to boost voter interest in the region because of the strategic nature of the 2023 general election.
The Head, Intervention Team of the Obi/Datti Presidential Campaign Council of Labour party, Dr. Ifedi Okwenna, stated this in Awka, Anambra State during a special meeting with members of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Anambra State Council, led by its chairman, Comrade Emeka Odogwu, at the Godwin Ezeemo International Press Center, NUJ Secretariat, Awka.
Okwenna said, “We at the Labour Party are making every necessary efforts to achieve good results at the polls. This is because, it will be wrong for other Nigerians to be lending their support to Peter Obi, while the South-East will be found wanting, by not voting massively for the LP presidential candidate.
“We are traversing all the nooks and crannies, we have suspended sleep, we have suspended rest to achieve this and we are not relenting. In the next three weeks the presidential election will hold, and Nigerians will elect a president after their own heart.
“Nigerians need a president with capacity, character, compassion, and who has the willpower to turn things around for the better, and the answer is in Peter Obi. Obi is one person among his contemporaries that can help Nigerians take back their country, and move it forward.”
Okwenna also noted with regret that since the inception of the present democratic dispensation which started in 1999, the South-East is yet to produce the number one citizen of the country; while other zones had taken turns at different times.
“By May 2023, the North, where Atiku and Kwankwaso are coming from, shall have produced a president for about 10 years under Musa Yar’Adua and Mohammadu Buhari, as well as vice president for six years under Namadi Sambo.
“South-West has produced a president and vice for 16 years in the last 20 years; under Olusegun Obasanjo and Yemi Osinbajo. The South-South has equally produced president for six years, and a vice president for two years within the same period, under Goodluck Jonathan. The South-East remains the only zone in Nigeria yet to produce a president for this country in the present democratic dispensation and, of course, since the end of the civil war in 1970,” he added.
Earlier, the Chairman NUJ Anambra State Council, Comrade Odogwu, thanked Okwenna and his team for considering NUJ Anambra Council as one of the first to visit in the South-East, and assured that their message of hope would be spread to Ndi Igbo to ensure that voter apathy is curbed.