The President-General of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo has declared that the Igbos feel unwanted in Nigeria and has revealed why the Easterners are fighting for the creation of the Republic of Biafra.
Chief Nwodo
Speaking while addressing journalists in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital on Wednesday, the President-General of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, John Nwodo, declared that Igbos feel unwanted in Nigeria.
Nwodo who further explained that the feel is due to the marginalisation of the people from the South Eastern part of the country, said; “Our people feel unwanted in the Nigerian federation; our people feel ill-treated.”
He noted that the Igbo race had been seen as “being incompetent, incapable, or unreliable of being vested with the headship of any of the security agencies in Nigeria.”
“Under the constitution of Nigeria, you have freedom of expression and freedom of association. If somebody says he wants Biafra, he is free to say so as long as he is saying it in a legitimate way. He can take his petition to the National Assembly.
“He can have a plebiscite, if he wins, fine, if he doesn’t win, he takes it like that. The fact that we, their fathers, have not joined them should give a signal to Nigeria that they have not yet become so popular to carry us along and that this matter can be addressed politically.
“There has been several failed negotiation which the federal government publicly admitted and millions of naira lost," Nwodo said.
Nwodo urged the Igbo race to see themselves as special people like the Jews “who through dint of hard work transformed the desert to an arable land despite all their travails and security concerns.”