The apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, has demanded an end to various forms of attack, including ethnic slurs, against the Igbo, particularly in Lagos State.
In a statement on Sunday afternoon by its National Publicity Secretary, Dr. Chiedozie Ogbonnia, Ohanaeze described the #IgboMustGo slogan, which surfaced during the recent nationwide hunger protest, as worrisome.
The organisation added that the slogan was nothing but ethnic profiling and hate speech.
It said it was the latest in a long list of ethnic attacks against the Igbo in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos State, demanding an end to the trend.
Ohaneze said unless something decisive was done by the government, there would be no end to 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.”
“It is certain that such reckless, provocative, divisive, instigative and inflammatory dispositions towards the Igbos in Lagos State, will remain unabated, except of course, there are manifest consequences for such vexatious, unscrupulous loose-cannons and hate-mongers,” it said.
The organisation said it recalled that “in June 2023, a few days before the March 18, 2023 governorship elections, a video went viral on social media showing Alhaji 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 the rampage carrying out civil-war-era-style eye tests to determine who was an Igbo and who was not. According to the report, ‘those they deemed to be Igbo were violently deprived of their rights to vote’. In some cases, people of other ethnic groups who did not pass the eye tests were also beaten and forced out of polling units.
“Earlier in 2015, the Oba of Lagos, Alhaji Rilwan Akiolu had issued a threat to the Igbo living in Lagos State ‘to either vote for the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode, or else they will die in the lagoon’.”
Ohanaeze said it also recalled that the same trend continued “on March 19, 2023, when Bayo Onanuga, now the Special Adviser to the President on Communications and Strategy, was reported by several news media to have issued a serious warning to the Igbo stating, ‘Let 2023 be the last time of Igbo interference in Lagos politics. Let there be no repeat in 2027.’
“When many well-meaning Nigerians, including Mr. Festus Keyamo, cautioned Onanuga on the ignoble path he had chosen for himself, he was quoted to have stated: ‘I owe no one apology for ethnic slur against the Igbo.’”
Ohanaeze also recalled how some thugs allegedly set ablaze the Igbo-majority Akere Spare Parts Market on March 8, 2023.”
While demanding an end to attacks on Igbo around the country, the organisation commended the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, for prompting condemning the latest verbal attack on the Igbo with the slogan #IgboMustGo.
It commended Sanwo-Olu and the state government for describing the #IgboMustGo slogan as “not only reckless and divisive but an attempt to sow a seed of discord between the Yoruba in the South-west and other tribes, especially those who have made Lagos their permanent place of abode.”
Ohanaeze similarly commended Afenifere “for living up to expectations” by calling 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”.
It was also “highly elated by the intervention made by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.”
“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 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.
“The Obasanjo presidency was very blind to ethnicity. The above qualities and more stand Chief Olusegun Obasanjo out as the conscience of the nation.”
PUNCH
