Fresh off a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja on Thursday, Abia State Governor Okezie Ikpeazu declared that his ethnic Igbos have rights to aspire to Nigeria’s presidency.

Mr Ikpeazu says Igbos, by virtue of their high mobility and business acumen “understand and know Nigeria better than” other tribes.

“I think that the south-easterners have a right to take a shot at the presidency of Nigeria and I dare say that our qualification starts from the fact that we understand and know Nigeria better than the other states of Nigeria,” Mr Ikpeazu told journalists at the State House.

“We (Igbos) go everywhere, we are everywhere, we invest everywhere, we are pan-Nigerian people. Today, a lot of people, on a lighter note are afraid of Sambisa. But for an Igbo man, Sambisa is a business opportunity. So, it will be preposterous of me not to add my voice to that one,” he added.

The Abia’s governor’s submissions come as agitations to zone Nigeria’s presidency to the South-East heats up. The region, hosting one of the country’s three main tribes, has not produced a Nigerian president since the return to democratic rule in 1999.

Mr Ikpeazu said “the question of a Nigerian president of South-East extraction is a national question that requires negotiation, discussion and conversation with all parts of this country and I am least qualified to determine what happened in 2023.”

On Wednesday, a political group, the Movement for Election of Nigerian President of Igbo Extraction, ask Igbo politicians to unite and lobby other regions to actualise South-East’s ambition to produce the president in 2023.

The South-East region has been rocked by Separatist agitations led by Nnamdi Kanu and his Indigenous People of Biafra group. Orgies of violence and violent confrontations have been recorded since IPOB formed Eastern Security Network against what it termed the invasion of Biafra land by Fulani marauders.