Tinubu, Mbah, the APC and the South-East

By Dr. Collins Ogbu, Esq.

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For 24 years, from 1999 to 2023, Ndi Igbo gave the PDP everything; our votes, our loyalty, our blood and our bloc. In return, what did we get? Neglect dressed as friendship. We were the bride that was never taken to the altar. Five presidential tickets, zero Igbo vice-presidential slots, zero Igbo Senate Presidency after Evan Enwerem and Adolphus Wabara, and a South-East that became the backyard of broken promises. The PDP used our votes to build power in Abuja while our roads became death traps and our youths became statistics. That era is over. The question before us in 2027 is not about party; it is about destiny.

And here is the moral weight of this story that our children must never forget: President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been benevolent to Ndi Igbo even though a greater percentage of us did not vote for him in 2023. In most of the South-East, he got less than 10% of the votes. Any bitter politician would have punished us. Any vengeful leader would have said, “you rejected me, so I reject you.” Tinubu did the opposite. He chose statesmanship over revenge, nation-building over bitterness. He looked beyond the ballots and saw a people who deserve development. If a man can love you when you did not vote for him, imagine what he will do when you stand with him in 2027. That is the definition of a father of the nation.

President Tinubu did what no President since 1999 has dared to do: he looked the South-East in the eye and treated us as partners in security and power, not as suspects. In the military, the highest command of this country’s security architecture now bears Igbo fingerprints. Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ikechukwu Ogalla from Enugu State became Chief of Naval Staff; the first time an Igbo man has held that position in the Fourth Republic. And when Ogalla retired, the President did not take the position away from us. He still appointed another Enugu son, Air Vice Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke, as the Chief of Air Staff. Two service chiefs, back-to-back, from the same state, from the same South-East. These are not token appointments. These are trust appointments. Tinubu gave the Igbo the keys to the nation’s waters and its skies at a time when others said we could not be trusted. That is a political statement that history will remember.

Then came the South-East Development Commission (SEDC); a dream our fathers died for since the end of the Civil War. From 1970 to 2023, every President promised reconstruction, reconciliation and rehabilitation, and every President failed. Tinubu signed the SEDC into law in 2024. For the first time, the South-East has its own development vehicle, with its own budget, its own mandate to rebuild our region like the NDDC rebuilt the South-South. This single act alone is worth more than 24 years of PDP loyalty. It is the institutional foundation for our Marshall Plan.

For the first time in our democratic history, an Igbo son, Engr. Dave Umahi, holds the strategic Ministry of Works; the ministry that decides which region lives and which region dies economically. And he has not disappointed. The Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway, abandoned for 20 years, is now near completion. The Enugu-Onitsha Expressway, the 2nd Niger Bridge access roads, the Enugu-Abakaliki, the Owerri-Umuahia, the Aba-Ikot Ekpene corridors; all moving at a pace we never saw under the PDP. This is not promise. This is asphalt, concrete, and evidence.

Look home, to Enugu, and see what alignment produces. When Governor Peter Mbah made the courageous decision to align Enugu with the centre by joining the APC, cynics said he sold us out. Today, the results mock the cynics. 268 Smart Green Schools; one in every ward, built in just three years. A feat no Governor in the history of the South-East has achieved. Enugu Talent City and the AI Institute from the NCC Digital Industrial Park leased for 15 years. Enugu Air, Enugu’s own airline. The International Conference Centre completed. The 300-bed Enugu International Hospital. Water flowing in Enugu metropolis after 20 years of thirst. This is what happens when a performing Governor is no longer fighting Abuja but working with Abuja.

The economics are even more powerful. Under Tinubu, the South-East is being reconnected to the national economy. The $1 trillion economy agenda is not Lagos agenda; it is our agenda. With SEDC, with the new coastal highway feeding into Eastern ports, with the revitalization of the Eastern rail line, with the renewed attention to the Enugu coal, Anambra gas, Ebonyi salt and Abia industrial clusters, the President is positioning Ndi Igbo to be the industrial engine of Africa again, as we were before the war. Continuity means our traders in Onitsha, Nnewi, Aba, and Ogbete will have power, roads, and ports to sell to the world without leaving home.

Let us speak the painful truth: isolation has never fed us. Political discordance has never built one kilometre of road. When we voted 95% against the centre, we got 5% of the budget. Politics is give and take. The Yoruba, our brothers in the South-West, are in power today. They understand reciprocity. If in 2027, the South-East gives Tinubu a solid bloc vote; not 5%, not 15%, but a decisive, united, brotherly vote, we lay the moral and political foundation for the Presidency of Nigeria to come to the South-East in 2039. That is how power rotates in Nigeria. You do not get power by shouting from the wilderness. You get it by building bridges while your brother is on the throne.

The PDP gave us slogans. The APC under Tinubu and Mbah is giving us schools, roads, commissions, appointments, and respect. To vote otherwise in 2027 is to vote for a return to the wilderness; to vote for anger over wisdom, for memory over future, for isolation over influence. Ndi Igbo are not a people of self-pity. We are a people of enterprise, of strategy, of long vision. Our fathers traded across Africa because they understood alliances.

Therefore, let 2027 be the year Ndi Igbo choose continuity over chaos, stability over sentiment, and future over grudge. Re-elect President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Re-elect Governor Peter Mbah. Vote APC at all levels; Senate, House of Representatives, State Assembly. Not because APC is perfect, but because for the first time since 1999, the South-East is finally inside the room where Nigeria’s future is decided, even when we did not vote for the man in the room. Let us not walk out of that room. Let us stay, build, and take our rightful place.

Ndi Igbo, the time is now. Tomorrow is here.