Apex Igbo social-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo has commended former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo over his recent remarks against the Igbo Must Go hashtag.
The controversial Igbo must go hashtag promoted by yet to be apprehended group has been widely condemn. The group sought to chase away Igbos living in Lagos and other states of the Southwest region.
Adding to the barrage of condemnation, Obasanjo in a press release, averred that “those saying that the Igbo must go from Lagos will be the ones to leave”.
The former president added that “he doesn’t believe that anybody in Nigeria should be driven away from any part of the country, asserting that, we own this country together”.
While commending the former President, a statement by the national publicity secretary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Dr Alex Ogbonnia noted with grave concern the orchestrated ethnic profiling, hate speech, incendiary and inflammatory rhetoric and outright demolition of Igbo properties and liquidation of their sources of income in Lagos State since a few years now.
Going down memory lane, Ogbonnia said the most recent was the statement that urged Lagosians and every South-West stakeholder to prepare for the massive protest of #IgboMustGo on the 20th – 30th of August, 2024.
He said “In June 2023, a few days before the March 18, 2023 gubernatorial elections, a video went viral on social media showing Alh. Musiliu Akinsanya, commonly known as ‘MC Oluomo’, where he issued a threat to the Igbo residents of Lagos to ‘either vote for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) or stay at home’.
“Based on the Oluoma doltish tantrums, political thugs went on a rampage carrying out civil-war-era-style eye tests to determine who was an Igbo and who was not,” he stated.
He commended the Afenifere for living up to expectations, noting that the Afenifere, through their national publicity secretary, Jare Ajayi, called on “all Nigerians living legitimately in any part of Yorubaland to entertain no fear about their safety or be afraid of being forced out of the area”.
Ogbonnia stated that the secretary general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Ambassador Okey Emuchay was highly elated by the intervention made by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, adding that he recalled Obasanjo’s dispositions to equity and fairness in all matters affecting Nigeria is very legendary.
Ogbonnia further noted that it was Obasanjo who insisted that the presidency of Nigeria should move to the North after his tenure, as a southerner.
“ It was again, Chief Obasanjo who insisted that Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan from the South South of Nigeria should become the President of Nigeria. When it mattered most, it was Obasanjo who lent full weight that the presidency of Nigeria should go to the South East of Nigeria in 2023.
“It was Obasanjo who handed over power to Alh. Shehu Shagari with Dr Alex Ekwueme, an Igbo as a Vice President, nine years after the Nigerian civil war. It was Obasanjo who condemned the persistent aversion to the Igbo, which he described as Igbophobia. It was Obasanjo who posited that unless ‘Nigeria throws its doors open to merit, competence and full inclusion of the Igbo in national affairs, the country will continue to flounder and grope in the dark’” he stated.
He commended the press release by the government of Lagos State, saying it was indeed very reassuring.
Ogbonnia however stressed that it was certain that such reckless, provocative, divisive, instigative and inflammatory dispositions towards the Igbo in Lagos State, will remain unabated, except of course, there were manifest consequences for such vexatious, unscrupulous loose –cannons and hate-mongers.
