ABUJA – Senatorial aspirant and chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in Abia South, Prince Paul Ikonne, has dismissed the proposals by the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, as well as former Anambra Governor, Peter Obi, to serve a single four-year presidential term, insisting that the South-east zone will demand nothing less than eight years when it eventually produces a president.
Ikonne, who until recently served as Executive Secretary of the National Agricultural Land Development Authority NALDA, made the remarks during a media interactive session in Abuja on Thursday, days after launching a grassroots mobilisation group — Asiwaju Tsunami in 2027 — aimed at driving massive voter turnout for President Bola Tinubu across the South East.
He declared that the 2027 election would be categorically different from 2023, describing Tinubu’s first victory as a wind and forecasting a tsunami in the next cycle.
On Obi’s single-term pitch, Ikonne questioned the logic of a four-year commitment, saying it would shortchange the zone at a time other regions had enjoyed full two-term presidencies.
“Why would he come and say that he wants to be President for four years? So he is trying to deprive the Southeasterners when other zones are doing eight years. No South-east man will vote for such a thing. No, not at all.
“We are not looking for a President who will just be there for four years. We want to produce, when the time comes, the Igbo President that will be there for eight years”, he said.
Ikonne faulted the practical workability of a four-year tenure, suggesting that the time would be consumed by bureaucratic settling-in before anything meaningful could be achieved.
“So, the Igbos will not make that mistake, and we will not be deceived to say let people come just for four years. To do what exactly? It may take him two years to appoint his ministers. Before they finish taking him around the Villa, finish meeting with the Permanent Secretaries and all that, four years will be over,” he said.
The APC chieftain asserted that support for Tinubu’s re-election is now unanimous across the South-east, pointing to Abia Governor Alex Otti’s movement from Labour Party to the President’s corner as the most telling proof.
“One clear indication is that when the governor who came on board to govern through the Labour Party is now supporting the President, that means the President doesn’t have any opposition in Abia state. So that is one clear assurance,” Ikonne said.
He tied Tinubu’s growing popularity in the zone directly to the administration’s fiscal federalism approach, arguing that the President’s decision to push resources down to state governments had begun to register positively on the ground.
“I guess I have seen what is happening in terms of development within the South-east and the kind of resources that the President has left in the hands of the governors. So people now know that, indeed, with the President’s mindset of allowing the funds to go straight to the governors, he means well for Nigerians.
“He wants democracy, he wants dividends of democracy to come from bottom up, which is what it should be. Development doesn’t come from the national level; it should come from the state and the local government, and the President has pushed resources down to the governors in order to implement developmental projects that will impact the lives of people.
“So Abians are ready to vote for the President again because there will not be any opposing party from Abia state. And I’m sure the traders in Abia are excited to have the President come back for the second time,” he added.
Ikonne also disclosed that Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, has constituted a team — of which he is a member — charged with taking the Tinubu re-election campaign to Igbo communities shop to shop and market to market, across the country, not just within the South-east.
Reacting to the NDC’s decision to zone its presidential ticket to the South, Ikonne read the move as an indirect endorsement of Tinubu completing two terms.
“What they have just said is that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu should complete his eight years, because the North completed eight years. If they have zoned it to the North, then you now say, okay, there’s competition, there’s questioning, there’s a decision that one zone should not. But for the fact that they say they have zoned their ticket to the South means that they are confirming that Asiwaju should conclude and complete his eight years, which is what has been the practice since democracy started in Nigeria,” he argued.
“So 2023 was wind, but in 2027, Asiwaju is coming with a tsunami. And you can see that all the state governors in the Southeast, they are all supporting the president. In the 2027 election, you now see that there will not be any governor in the South-east that will not be supporting the president. It wasn’t so in 2023. So the tsunami that will hit Nigeria will start from the South-east, most especially from Abia South Senatorial District,” he added.
On his ambition to unseat long-serving Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe in Abia South, Ikonne was unsparing, arguing that nearly two decades in the Senate without a single visible constituency project had rendered Abaribe’s continued stay untenable.
“Senator Abaribe is already coming back home. This is 20 years in the Senate, and there is nothing to show for it. There is nowhere you will go and you will see any constituency project in the entire Abia South. It is interesting to note that Abia South is the engine hub of Abia state and by extension the South-east because Aba is the commercial nerve centre for the South-east. Abia South is also the oil-producing zone for Abia state. Yet there is nothing to show for it,” he said.
Ikonne argued that Abaribe’s split from Peter Obi ahead of 2023 had further eroded whatever political capital the senator retained, while successive party changes — from APGA to ADC to Labour Party — had stripped him of credibility.
“Senator Abaribe abandoning Peter Obi is a clear indication that what happened in the 2023 general election will not happen again in the South-east. Number one, it goes to show that Peter Obi will no longer have that kind of wave that came in 2023.
“I will be very glad, so excited to have him contest against me from the Labour Party. Don’t forget that he has lost a lot of credibility jumping from APGA controversially to ADC or something like that, then from ADC now to the Labour Party. So, that tells you that he is on his way out,” Ikonne added.
