Tony Okafor, Awka
Nigerians in diaspora, under the aegis :Diasporans for Good Governance (DGG), have chided oil mogul, Prince Arthur Eze, over comments credited to him asking Presidential Candidate of the Labor Party (LP)Mr Peter Obi to perish his presidential ambition.
Prince Arthur Eze was reported to have told traditional rulers and women groups in his Ukpo country home on Christmas eve, that Anambra State Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, was the expected Nigerian president of Igbo extraction not Obi.
Reacting to the development on Friday in a statement jointly signed by the conveners of the group , Sir Johnny Obika, Dr Ben Opara, Barr. Franklin Nwakor, Mike Okaka and Ambassador Camillus Konkwo, (DGG) said the billionaire businessman had no basis to ask Obi to withdraw from the race.
The group stressed that Peter Obi’s candidacy represented the new order of competence, capacity, integrity, and political decency while Arthur Eze represented the old order and rentier system that had held Nigeria down.
The group’s statement read in part, “As a private citizen, Eze is entitled to his choice of candidate. He however does not have any moral grounds to ask Peter Obi to withdraw from the race.
“When Peter Obi started talking about turning Nigeria from consumption to production, we knew that those who profit from Nigeria’s dysfunctional rentier system will fight hard to retain the status quo. These are people of the establishment who thrive on such scams like subsidy.”
“The people have however resolved to take their destiny into their hands. That’s why the
masses are flocking to Peter Obi who represents the new order and the light that will guide them out of darkness. It is only logical that agents of darkness will lament about the regime of light.
“Arthur Eze’s continued support for the PDP and APC only shows that he is a part of the political cabal that has brought unprecendented insecurity, economic hardship, oil theft, corruption, unemployment, and debt crises. His latest attack on Obi is only an attempt to sustain the stranglehold on Nigeria which they have turned into the poverty capital of the world.
Adding, the group said gone were the days when Eze and a few privileged individuals like him decided for the people, stating that the Nigerian masses had been pushed to the wall for far too long and that was why they had decided for themselves about the 2023 polls.
The group reminded Nigerians of their obligation to defy party boundaries and vote Labour Party’s Peter Obi if they desired to rescue themselves from the shackles that had tied them down.
“We join the entire Nigerian citizenry in Nigeria and in the diaspora to say no to political merchants of neo-imperialism, dehumanization and mass impoverishment,” the group stated.
