The apex Igbo sociocultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has said the group will not join issues with those who are opposed to the collective Igbo aspiration with hope that, as in every ideology, more converts will key in when the logs of wood in their eyes are cleared.
Ohanaeze Ndigbo made the statement in response to the spokesperson of Northern Elder’s Forum, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed.
Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed had expressed worry about the position of the South East towards Peter Obi, election.
According to Baba-Ahmed “we don’t know whether they are in support of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party or not. The nation can see what is happening now and if the South East fails to line up behind Obi, they should not blame anybody” He charged the Igbo to “reach out to other Nigerians and tell them they are supporting Obi not because he is an Igbo man but because he is the best”.
But The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide led by Ambassador Professor George Obiozor in a statement by their Publicity Secretary, Dr Chiedozie Alex Ogbonnia reassured the “Igbos are solidly behind our illustrious son, Mr. Peter Obi.”
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Dr. Ogbonnia stressed that “The Ohanaeze support to Obi is not because of his Igboness as rightly pointed out by Baba -Ahmed, what goes for Obi today is the awesome quality service he rendered to his people as a governor; and of course, the dispositional humility, character comeliness and intellectual acumen that define his public conducts. As a governor, Obi was busy setting standards of good governance for posterity, while some other myopic, timid and mundane governors were busy with unconscionable primitive acquisition of wealth to the detriment or impoverishment of the very masses that voted them into office.”
The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide led by Ambassador Professor George Obiozor reassures the Northern Elders Forum and indeed the whole Nigeria that the South East of Nigeria or better put, the Igbo are solidly behind our illustrious son, Mr. Peter Obi. There is no gainsaying the distraction by the negligible minority-elite who by the aid of the social media have over exaggerated their self-worth, authority, power and political relevance.
“Instructively, the Christian religion informs that in every twelve, there must be a Judas, This is a statement of fact, history, experience and a socio-political imperative. In other words, it is rather inconceivable to expect everybody to support Obi. What is important is that the Obi-Datti movement has gained the support of over ninety percent Igbo and continues to swell with time.
“We will give our support to the best man who can heal the wounds in the land because actually, everybody in Nigeria is marginalized right now,” What has remained the curse of the third world is in the choice we make at every occasion. While our ugly past has been defined by selfishness, greed, injustice, ethnic and religious sentiments, the enlightened Nigerian youths of today are more imaginative, proactive, creative, rational and cosmopolitan.
“The prevailing poverty and hardship do not recognize the boundaries of ethnicity and religion. Therefore, Nigeria is at a critical juncture with a choice between our characteristic vicious circle on one hand and the virtuous circle annotated with wealth creation and sustainable national development on the other.