A Yoruba group that sprang up overseas and Biafra activists thought they hit it off in their plan to break up Nigeria when they both addressed a world press conference last week—only to know their agelong mutual distrust will in turn break up their own conspiracy which many Nigerians hardly take seriously.
The Ohanese Youth Council has therefore warned its own, IPOB and others, to back off, in view of the 2023 presidency which the region hopes to clinch, a hope it believes Yoruba wants to frustrate.
“Igbo Youths wish to categorically warn Biafra agitators that the sudden reappearance of Oduduwa Republic was hurriedly packaged with sinister motives by enemies of Igbos to frustrate 2023 Igbo presidential project and divide the ranks of Biafrans,” a release by the OYC President Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro said.
“Oduduwa Republic is designed to hoodwink Biafrans into a planned disaster that awaits them in the near future. If Late Obafemi Awolowo could betray Biafrans and promulgate economic policies that led to the starvation and painful deaths of over two million Biafrans during the civil war and gave 20 pounds to those that survived the pogrom of the war, then, no right-thinking Igbo will fall for a cheap deal for a purported declaration of Oduduwa Republic.”
The group stated with emphasis that the region will never support any declaration of Oduduwa Republic.
“We are only in support of the northern alliance with east. Northerners had been the traditional and political allies of the Igbo since 1960”
The Yoruba One Voice (YOV) came up recently in the UK, claiming the support of some Yoruba leaders like Aare Ona Kankanfo, to spearhead the agitation for a Yoruba republic as the nation faces security and economic challenges.
Although at home, there have been talks and fears about disintegration by mostly those who have been out power and government for a long while in the southwest.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Prof Wole Soyinka recently expressed their worries about the nation’s existence as one. Their worries have however taken no threatening or definite action to break up the country.
But the YOV and its Biafran activists gave the President Muhammadu Buhari government till October 2021 to conduct a referendum.