The Igbo apex socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has again urged South-Easterners not to join the planned nationwide protest to avoid being targeted by the Nigerian security forces.
Ohanaeze in a statement issued on Monday through its National Publicity Secretary, Alex Ogbonnia, explained that the current hardship in Nigeria was the “comeuppance of Igbophobia”.
According to the statement, “It is an unavoidable outcome of an orchestrated injustice, marginalisation, callous conspiracies, corporate shenanigans and ethnic bigotry against the Igbo.”
The apex Igbo body maintained that there cpuld never be peace, progress and national development when there was a deliberate government policy of injustice toward a major ethnic group such as the Igbo in Nigeria.
The statement partly read: “Ohanaeze Ndigbo seizes this opportunity to reiterate our position with respect to the widely publicised nationwide protest scheduled for the days of August, 2024.
“On February, 20, 2024, the President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, directed the Igbo not to join in the protest against President Bola Tinubu.
“He explained that Igbo youths and youths from other ethnic groups at various times expressed their dissatisfaction with events in the country. It is clear to us that when youths from other tribes of the country are involved, they are reprimanded and forgiven; but when the Igbo youths are involved they are arrested, incarcerated and even charged for serious offences.
“For example, the arrest and detention of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu generated a lot of problems for the Igbo amongst others.
“Emphatically, the current hardship in Nigeria is the comeuppance of Igbophobia. It is an unavoidable outcome of an orchestrated injustice, marginalisation, callous conspiracies, corporate shenanigans and ethnic bigotry against the Igbo.
“Ohanaeze Ndigbo stands on a firm wicket based on reason, history and experience, to state that there can never be peace, progress and national development when there is a deliberate government policy of injustice, tantrums and brimstones against a vibrant, capacious, resourceful, resilient and populous ethnic group such as the Igbo.”
The statement added, “On Saturday, March 25, 2023, during the occasion of one year in Office of Prof Chukwuma Soludo, the Governor of Anambra State, the former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo condemned the persistent aversion to the people of southeastern extraction, which he described as Igbophobia.
“Obasanjo added that unless Nigeria throws its doors open to merit and full inclusion of the Igbo in national affairs, the country will continue to flounder and grope in the dark.
“Finally, the Igbo are once again requested not to join the forthcoming nationwide protest. When President Muhammadu Buhari appointed about 15 service chiefs in Nigeria and Igbo was secluded, did the lopsided policy abate the security situation in Nigeria? And have we died? And many more…? It was Robert Schuller who posited that ‘Tough times never last but tough people do.'”
