Zikist-Buharist-Movement (ZBM) which will mobilise massive votes for incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari has been launched in the South-East.
It was launched by the Buhari Support Organisation (BSO).
A communiqué issued on Sunday after the BSO South-East Summit by Chief Stanley Ohajuruka and Godwin Onwusi, South-East Coordinator and Acting Secretary of BSO, said ZBM remains a non-partisan movement launched to go beyond the party lines to scaling up votes for Buhari.
The movement would carry out massive mobilization of APC members and non partisan Ndigbo at home and Diaspora for Buhari’s re-election.
The communiqué read in part: “Our study shows that the total membership of all the political parties APC, PDP, APGA, UPP et al is less than 30 per cent of the electorate.
“And that the turnout of registered voters in the previous elections has been very poor, which makes it imperative that we have to mobilize in order to achieve 2019 massive vote for President Buhari and 2023 presidential turn of Ndigbo.
“In this connection, we today launch the Zikist-Buharist-Movement (ZBM), a non-partisan movement aimed at mobilising Ndigbo both at home and abroad.
“The ZBM in the best tradition of the great Zik, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, want to reopen the ancient North-East political alliance, which without the exclusion of any geopolitical zone earned Ndigbo indelible laurels in the 1st and 2nd Republics.
“BSO South East proclamation that 2023 is our turn to produce Nigeria president of Igbo extraction is based on equity, natural justice and good conscience.
“For it is our considered view that the rotation of president convention from Southern Belt to Northern Belt introduced by patriots in 1999; 4th Republic, when Nigeria returned to civil rule, is for equity, natural justice, and harmony of our dear country.
“It is based on equity, natural justice and good conscience that we remind ourselves that since 1999, the South East geopolitical zone is the only geopolitical zone in the Southern Belt which has not presided over Nigeria.
“And it is on record that despite the truism that His Excellencies, Dr Alex Ekwueme and Dr Ogbonnia Onu, were shoved aside in Jos and Kaduna presidential primaries, respectively. Ndigbo albeit voted overwhelmingly for the winner, ex-President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo of the South West, who served for eight years’’.
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It recalled that in 2010 and 2015, Ndigbo repeated the same voting pattern by voting overwhelmingly for ex-President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, adding that it was clear that Ndigbo supported their two Southern brothers, even when South West in 1999 refused to vote for Obasanjo, meaning that `Ndigbo has paid their dues’.
The communiqué stated further: “BSO South East in deep reflection asked ourselves, what option in a scenario where two Fulani-Muslim brothers – Buhari and Atiku – are front liners in the 2019 Presidential Election, who could the great Zik choose if he were alive?
“In answering this germane question, we said two major critical issues will readily come to Zik’s mind – one, whom between the two of them has the support of the North; two, what is their programmes?
“As a pragmatist, the great Zik would readily choose President Buhari who has uncommon cult followership in the northern belt. This choice is based on the pragmatism that for us to achieve the Igbo presidency, we need Buhari’s supporters not only in the north but nationwide.
“On the second issue, the great Zik would be attracted by His Excellency Atiku Abubakar’s promise to restructure the country in six months in office; but as a pragmatist he will reason that it cannot be achieved by Fiat-Executive-Order.
“Whereas the Atiku restructuring mantra is appetizing, the truism is that it cannot be done by Fiat-Executive Order, but by the amendment of the rigid 1999 Constitution. All that glitters is not gold, the sage says’’.
The statement said that APC and by extension President Buhari was not against restructuring, otherwise they could not have set up the Malam El-Rufia Committee on Restructuring and its report receiving attention.
On the issue of four years, it said that Buhari’s remaining four years after 2019 is cast on constitutional stone, while Atiku’s is at best pledge.
“In summary, we call on Ndigbo both at home and abroad, to join the ZBM to actualise this noble objective of over 80 per cent massive vote for the performing president, President Muhammadu Buhari,’’ it said.
The summit was attended by BSO and APC chieftains including Chief Osita Okechukwu of Voice of Nigeria (VON); the Director-General, Nigerian Film Commission, Mr Chidia Maduekwe; National Commissioner of National Population Commission, Mr Ejike Eze, and National Chairman of BSO, Dr Abubakar Mahmood.
Others are Enugu State BSO Coordinator, Mr Anike Nwoga; Imo State BSO Coordinator, Adaobi Obi; Enugu State APC Publicity Secretary, Mrs Kate Offor, and the Senatorial Candidate of APC in Enugu East, Prince Lawrence Eze.
