The Ohanaeze Ndigbo, weekend, charged town unions of communities in Igbo land to use this year’s Christmas and New Year celebrations to discuss developmental matters, including political sensitisation of eligible voters ahead of the 2023 elections.

 

Ohanaeze’s national publicity secretary, Dr. Alex Ogbonnia, stated this in a message he released in Enugu.

 

According to him, “As we approach the 2023 general elections, the usual Igbo town meetings that hold every December offer us a veritable opportunity to address certain issues that confront the Igbo as a collective.

 

“The Igbo society is structured in a concentric outgrowth hierarchy of family, kindred, hamlet, village and town; and each of the units has a leadership and ultimately a traditional ruler for an efficient and effective social-political community organization.”

 

He urged communities, led by traditional rulers and presidents-general, to address insecurity and the 2023 elections during their meetings.

 

According to him, “The South East of Nigeria was adjudged the most peaceful and serene geopolitical zone until April 5, 2021, when hoodlums or the unknown gunmen attacked and overwhelmed the Correctional Centre, Owerri, and released a total of 1, 844 prison inmates.

 

  “Ohanaeze had interrogated the strategic capacity of the local non-state actors to overwhelm a highly fortified correction centre and discharged a total of 1,844 inmates without any arrest.

 

“Since that episode, the Igbo are confronted with various forms of insecurity. Added to the menace of Fulani herdsmen-farmers clashes, we now have Fulani kidnappers and community invaders in many parts of Igbo land.”

 

Ohanaeze regretted that hundreds of lives have been lost to these recent developments, adding that, “This is very appalling and unbecoming. There must be a drastic step to counter the narrative.”

 

Ahead of the 2023 elections, Ohanaeze stated “Nigeria is at a crossroads. It stares all of us in our faces that if Nigeria is allowed to continue to swim in corporate malfeasance, corruption, incompetence, moral turpitude, zero patriotism, and the likes that have given rise to the ongoing mass unemployment, rising insecurity, poverty, and other pathologies, our next generation will suffer irretrievably.

 

“The Ohanaeze Ndigbo does not wax eloquent on partisan politics. Rather, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide is an umbrella socio-cultural organization with a central philosophy to represent and protect the interests of all Igbo communities within and outside Nigeria.