Ohanaeze to IPOB: Drop referendum, participate in elections
THE leadership of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Wing has pleaded with the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, to forget its call for referendum on February 16 and participate in Nigeria’s presidential election scheduled for the same day. Female members of IPOB protesting Ohanaeze Chieftain alleges Nwodo’s tenure has expired Ohanaeze youths said that IPOB’s fixture of their own referendum for the same day as Nigeria election date was more or less asking for confrontation with the security agencies which could result to slaughter of innocent Igbo youths once again.
The youths also pleaded with IPOB that boycotting the election would be counter-productive pursuant to Igbo cause of re-asserting itself in the Nigeria state, while it also reminded IPOB that the Igbo was yet to recover from the 2006 census boycott which the Movement for Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB executed. National leader of Ohanaeze Youth Wing, Chief Arthur Obiora in a statement in Enugu, yesterday, said: “While we would not subscribe to any form of carnage by the military in our land in the name of suppressing unarmed pro-Biafra agitators; our considered opinion is that IPOB members by their utterances and open threats are giving the military justifiable reason to flood Igbo land with soldiers. “We appeal to any persons who have access to their leadership to let them know that they are missing it.
The truth is that referendum is not the solution to the problems bedeviling us as a race in Nigeria; rather, it would compound our woes as marginalised people in the Nigerian system. “We would not want a repeat of the visionless order for the boycott of the 2006 national head-count by the then leader of MASSOB, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, which the Igbo would ever live to regret.” Ohanaeze youths also aligned with the position of its parent body, Ohanaeze Ndigbo in the endorsement of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, saying restructuring which Atiku promised is badly needed in Nigeria. Vanguard
