By Princely Onyenwe, Imo
The Ohanaeze Youth Council (OYC), the apex youth wing of Ohanaeze Ndigbo has rejected calls for restricting the 2023 presidential ambition to only Igbos within the enclave of the Southeast geopolitical zone.
The Council made this known in Enugu on Thursday, March 4, 2021, after its stakeholders’ meeting.
Speaking with 9News Nigeria after the meeting, the National President of the Council, Comrade Igboayaka O. Igboayaka noted that it was the turn of Ndigbo to aspire and become the number one citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, stressing that those talking about limiting the collective aspiration of Ndigbo to only include the Southeast lack the common sense of history and are agents of divide and rule against the Igbo unity.
He stated that Ohanaeze Youth Council (OYC) are a new generation of Igbo extraction that have discovered that artificial state creation and geopolitical zones in Nigeria has caused greater harm than good to the Igbo race and the unity they desire.
Igboayaka noted that states and geo-political zone creations are concepts of balkanization of the Igbo nation, adding that Igbos are originally occupying 13 states in the South-South, Southeast and North Central Nigeria.
He decried the harm of state creation against Ndigbo, recalling that in 1976, state creation divided Ndoki people into three wherein two communities was ceded to Rivers state and one to Abia state while another community was ceded to Akwa Ibom.
“Today, the culture and brotherhood of great Ndoki clan have been balkanized, but Ohanaeze Youth Council will not stand by and let this conspiracy to continue… We must earnestly unify the Igbo race for economic and political advancement. Therefore, any person from Abia, Rivers and Akwa Ibom have the equal right to vie for the president of Nigeria in 2023,” Igboayaka stated.
The youth leader revealed that Umuine Igbodo in Etche LGA of Rivers State and Umuezeala, Okpala of Ngor Okpala in Imo state are of the same ancestral fathers, but today Umuine Igbodo is located in South-South while Okpala is in Southeast, saying that therefore, Igbos in the South-South, Southeast and North Central shall have the support of Ohanaeze Youth Council(OYC) to vie for Nigeria’s Presidency in 2023.
“All the communities of Igbo Land, Abia, Anambra, Awka Ibom, Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Enugu, Edo, Delta, Cross River, Kogi, Imo, Rivers and Benue are qualified for Nigeria President of Igbo extraction in 2023,” Comrade Igboayaka added.
Comrade Igboayaka O Igboayaka appealed to all patriotic and progressive Igbo men and women with a sense of history to embrace Igbo unification to actualize Nigeria’s president of Igbo extraction come 2023, by adopting the Igbo concept of “Igwe Bu Ike” and “Onye Aghala Nwanne Ya”.
This press release was signed by the group SA Media and Publicity Chukwuemeka Chimerue.
9News Nigeria (Owerri)
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