WHO SPEAKS FOR THE EAST?

My grandmother owns a small television in a small room in Awka.On election nights, she pulls her chair close, turns the volume high, and watches the results roll in like she's waiting for a child to come home from a long journey. She has done this for decades.She does not vote anymore. Her fingers are too stiff for the thumbprint, her eyes too tired for the long queues. But she watches. Last election, when the winner was announced, she turned to me and asked a question I have not stopped hearing since:“Who spoke for us? And why was no one listening?” The Eastern states have produced governors. Senators. Ministers. Businessmen who can buy buildings in Lagos without blinking.But the presidency remains a door that does not open for us. Why?Because we speak in whispers when we should speak in choruses. Because we fight among ourselves while others organize. Because we assume our credentials will speak for us, forgetting that in Nigerian politics, credentials do not speak—coalitions do. We wait for the North to consider us. We wait for our turn like children outside a game already in motion.Meanwhile, the game continues without us.Producing qualified individuals is not the same as producing a president. A president is born in the long, unglamorous work of building bridges while no one is watching.There is no use nursing the wounds of 1967, arguing about Biafra, speaking in a language of grievance the rest of the country stopped listening to years ago. Grievance does not win elections. Strategy wins elections.The East must learn to speak with one voice. Not the voice of governors alone. Not the voice of elders alone. But the voice of markets in Onitsha, of students in Nsukka, of artists in Awka.The East must build relationships before we need them. Not when the convention is around the corner, not when the ticket is being negotiated, but now—consistently, until the rest of the country cannot imagine a Nigerian president without an Eastern accent in his coalition.The East must raise a candidate who does not just want to win, but deserves to win. Someone who has spent years, not months, earning the trust of people who do not share his language or his food or his faith. My grandmother still owns that small television in that small room.I visited her last week. The screen was off. She was sitting in her chair, looking at it anyway.“Next time,” she said “Next time, I want to hear a name I understand. Not because I know him. Because he looks like someone who understands that the East is not asking for a gift—only a conversation.”She turned to me.“Will they be ready?" I am still not sure I have an answer.But I know this: the presidency is not something the East deserves by history alone. It is something we must become worthy of. Not by complaining. Not by blaming the West or the North or the ancestors.But by finally learning to speak for ourselves.Until the rest of the country has no choice but to listen.Who speaks for the East?The better question is:When will we all speak at once?

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