Ohanaeze Ndigbo has joined other Nigerians to extol former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo for kicking against the ethnic profiling of Ndigbo in Lagos by some people promoting the Igbo Must Go campaign.
In a press statement on Sunday, the National Publicity Secretary of the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Alex Ogbonnia, who detailed a series of provocative and incendiary remarks made against the Igbo in Lagos in recent time, commended Obasanjo for raising a strong voice against Igbo haters in Lagos.
Obasanjo had in a press release, admonished those saying that the Igbo must go from Lagos that they will be the ones to leave, saying he does not believe that anybody in Nigeria should be driven away from any part of the country.
To those who nurse such an ambition, the former president declared: “We own this country together!.
Insisting that 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 within the past few years, were quite ominous, Ohanaeze ndigbo, however, noted that “The Governor of Lagos State Babajide Sanwo-Olu has condemned the Igbo Must Go mis-adventurers.
The apex Igbo sociocultural organisation also expressed delight at Afenifere, the apex Youruba socio-cultural organisation’s reassurance that all Nigerians legitimately living in Yoruba land, the Igbo inclusive, are welcome and must not entertain any fear of eviction of any kind.
“The Secretary General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Ambassador Okey Emuchay, was highly elated by the intervention made by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo,” the statement emphasized.
“He recalled that Obasanjo’s disposition to equity and fairness in all matters affecting Nigeria is legendary. 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,” he said.
Ohanaeze however noted that “it is certain that such reckless, provocative, divisive, instigative and inflammatory dispositions towards the Igbo in Lagos State, will remain unabated, except of course, there are manifest consequences for such vexatious, unscrupulous loose –cannons and hate-mongers.”
