A pan-Igbo group, The Igbo Conscience, says some former political office holders who served in the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan were behind the Biafran revolt.
The TIC said this was why the protests gained momentum immediately after Jonathan was defeated at the poll. The leader of the group, Mr. Monday Ubani, who is a former Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Ikeja branch, said this at a news conference in Lagos on Wednesday. Ubani noted that during Jonathan’s administration, many Igbo politicians were given juicy appointments.
He, however, added that the appointments did not improve the standard of living of the people of the South-East. He said, “As recently as six months ago, the Igbo occupied and boasted of occupying prime positions in the country during the six years of President Jonathan’s rule. Why is it that immediately after the defeat of the past regime in March, the cries of Igbo marginalisation rose to high heavens with slanderous allegations against the President-elect?
“What were the merits the Ndigbo derived from this much-vaunted strategic placing in critical positions for six years? Should the Igbo be crying of marginalisation just a few months after sitting on the upper echelons of the country’s political and economic spheres if these political beneficiaries benefitted the Ndigbo with their positions? “Should roads and other facilities in the South-East be as dilapidated as they are today if we benefitted from these former office holders, some of whom are sponsoring the present agitations?”
Ubani said many Igbo youths had been brainwashed into believing that secession was the only way to address national problems.
He said even the late leader of the defunct Republic of Biafra, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, said that the Biafran struggle was a “struggle of the mind and not a physical one.”
He noted that countries like Pakistan and South Sudan, which seceded from India and Sudan respectively, had not fared better even after attaining independence. He, therefore, urged the protesting youths to have a rethink.
Ubani said the philosophy of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra was at variance with Ojukwu’s and that was why the late Igbo leader never identified with MASSOB. He said the Director of Radio Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, was an impostor and did not have the interests of the Igbo at heart.
Punch
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