2027: ADF demands for President of Igbo extraction *Wants FG to appropriate N1 trillion to SEDC

By Iheanyi Chukwudi

A leading Igbo think tank, Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) has demanded for a national consensus that the next President of Nigeria would be of Igbo extraction.

Basing it's demand on the premise of the exoneration of Ndigbo from the January 1966 coup by former Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, in his recent widely publicised book “A Journey in Service,” ADF also requested for the immediate and unconditional release of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu from prolonged detention.

ADF in a statement by it's President and former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Ukachukwu Awuzie, titled, “Nigeria, her Canceric and Malignant Igbophobic Problem and Babangida’s A Journey in Service,” further requested the Federal Government to appropriate N1 trillion to the South East Development Commission (SEDC).

The fund, which is for the period of five years, the Foundation said was for "infrastructure development of the zone in form of reparation for Igbo properties abandoned in Port Harcourt and Lagos during the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, and for the resettlement of their kith and kin excised from the South East into other regions after the war."

Awuzie said, “It is very unfortunate that some Nigerians and their rulers pay lip service to the Nigerian question. It is worse when it comes to the Igbo question in Nigeria, before, during and after the Nigeria-Biafra war. We note with despair the trifling with the national anthems-both the old-new and the new. We are determined to use this auspicious opportunity to demand the appropriate restitution on the part of Ndigbo as follows.

One of the unwritten codes of limitations operating against ndi Igbo today in Nigeria is as a result of the lies concerning the January 1966 Coup that has excluded ndi Igbo from certain positions in Nigeria. We demand that a consensus be made that the next president of Nigeria emerges from ndi Igbo. It happened in Nigeria before.

Recall that it was the annulment of June 12 election that gave the Yoruba nation the privilege of the 1999 presidency. Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, an eminently qualified Igbo man, on this note gave way for Chief Olu Falae and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to be the sole contestants for the 1999 presidential election, thus willy-nilly producing a President of Nigeria of Yoruba extraction. Ndi Igbo demand such honour if they are still wanted in Nigeria.

Given what has been revealed by Babangida, it is therefore not wrong for any Igbo man to seek for self-determination-an inalienable right that is enshrined in the Nigerian constitution, African Charter of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Charter on the rights of the indigenous peoples of the world.

Based on the above, we boldly demand the unconditional and speedy release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from prison. This is because other Nigerians like Sunday Igboho have engaged even more in what he engaged himself in. Why is his own different? It is even worse off when terrorists, such as members of Boko Haram, ISWAP, among others have been pardoned and integrated into Nigerian security agencies.”

Awuzie, who is also the former Vice Chancellor of Imo State University (IMSU) Owerri, appreciated Babangida for confirming that "the January 15, 1966 Coup was not an Igbo affair."

He noted that previous efforts to make the wartime Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, to say the truth about the coup de ‘tat, yielded no results.

He said, "In 2016, ADF wrote a widely advertised open letter to Gowon, pleading with him to tell the world whether the coup led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was an Igbo coup or Nigerian coup as others were dubbed.

As expected, Gowon failed to respond to the letter published as advertorials in three national dailies and posted to his Ray Field residence in Jos, which he acknowledged, prompting ADF to respond in a book titled, The Nigeria’s January 1966 Coup and Biafra: Myths and Realities.”

The ADF boss however, welcomed the fact that one of those he described as protagonists in the destruction of Ndigbo during the war, General Babangida, swallowed his pride to confirm the obvious that Nzeogwu who led the January 15, 1966 coup was more Hausa-Fulani than Igbo and that the coup was not an Igbo affair, but aimed at installing Chief Obafemi Awolowo as the Prime Minister of Nigeria.

Awuzie said: “It was disingenuous the fact that the counter coup of July 1966 was overtly geared to northern (far-northern) domination and negatively midwifed a horrid bloodlust and a total collapse of compatriot spirit against the Igbo-a situation that still pervades the Nigerian polity, up till today, thus questioning the basis of a united one Nigeria.

“Thirdly, General Babangida clarified that those who purveyed the destructive and malicious lie that it was an Igbo coup were the ones motivated by the desire of ethnic dominance to trigger an anti-Igbo tension on a national scale of Igbophobia. One can infer that there was a deliberate ploy or plot hatched ahead of time to deploy the coup as a subterfuge for a genocide against ndi Igbo.

Further: that an Igbo officer, Major General Anuforo assassinated another Igbo brother officer, Colonel Unegbe who opposed the coup. Another Igbo officer, major Obienu played a key role in halting the coup. Unfortunately, when Major Obienu was later to be hounded and murdered by Northen soldiers during the counter coup, it didn’t matter to them that he put his life on the line to foil the ‘Igbo coup’. To them, what matters was that he was Igbo, and therefore must die.”

The former ASUU leader, maintained that "until Nigerians start having a genuine conversation about our national unity, the aggrieved would continue to ask vital questions whenever the opportunities present themselves, and demand for freedom from their oppressors."

The issue of June 12, 1993 election, he said should not be of utmost importance and interest to any wise Nigerian, of the several revelations made by IBB in his book, as he did not write anything unknown before now about the annulled election.

Awuziue said ADF also demands the return of Igbo communities excised from Igbo states after the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War, such as the Igbo Akiri or Igbanke from Edo State and Igbos in Awka-Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Benue and Kogi.

He said since it is difficult to restore all the ‘abandoned properties’ of ndi Igbo, especially in Port Harcourt, they were equally demanding hundred trillion Naira to be appropriated to the South East Development Commission (SEDC) over the period of five years, as reparation for the restoration of all properties abandoned in Port Harcourt, Lagos, among others, as a result of the lies of the Civil War.

He explained that the money from the reparation would be used for infrastructure development of the zone and for resettlement of our isolated kith and kin excised from the zone, to show the nation’s willingness to let off some grievances in the interest of national peace.

ADF, he said, demands for a public apology from Nigeria, the kind that culminated in the reintegration of the South Africans after apartheid, as well as the naming of a national monument after Professor Humphrey Nwosu, the hero of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections, which Babangida admitted in his book that Bashorun MKO Abiola won.