According to Njiko Igbo Forum, a subsidiary of the foremost Igbo socio-cultural group Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Federal Government of Nigeria is still at war with the Igbo in Nigeria.
This was stated by the Forum’s president, Rev. Okechukwu Obioha, in a statement made available to Platinum Times on Thursday evening.
He asserted that the palliative being implemented by the federal government to lessen the impact of the termination of the gasoline subsidy would not provide comfort to the residents of the South-East area.
Obioha, who is also the convener/chairman of the South-East Equity Group (SEEP), claimed that the insensitive and discriminatory policies of previous administrations continued to be a grave insult to the nation’s Igbo men.
He observed that even many years after the civil war, the South-Easters were still viewed as the defeated.
Obioha cited the Eastern rail corridor’s abandonment as evidence that the federal government was ill-prepared to include the Igbo in its development strategies.
“There is no equity, justice and fairness.
No amount of the so-called palliative from the Federal Government extended to the people of the South-East zone can assuage or compensate them enough, as long as the Eastern Corridors of the Railways remained recklessly abandoned.
“From the days of Sure-P of the Obasanjo administration to the Buhari-led government, all other rail lines and even new ones, particularly that of the Katsina to Niger (another country) were constructed and made operational, except that of the Eastern Corridors running from Port-Harcourt to Enugu and then Makurdi – Maiduguri,” he said.
The Ohanaeze chieftain said the situation became more insulting when the federal government pulled off the rails/slippers all through these corridors, leaving no sign or trace of a former rail line, except grasses and trees that have grown thereby.”
“How else can this be explained except that the Federal government, by this obnoxious brazen dichotomy, is still at war with the Igbo of the South-East?” He queried.
Obioha added that
“the war is still on and as far as the average Igbo is concerned, the struggle to survive still continues unabated.
“There is nothing like palliative to the Vanquished Nigeria Igbo, but to the Nigeria Victor.”
Obioha’s assertion comes amid complaints from locals about the amount of ministerial positions the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration allocated to the zone.
The South-East comes in last with its statutory five spaces, while the North-East has 10 slots and the South-West has 9.
However, according to the Tinubu presidency’s list of portfolios, the zone received four main ministers and one junior minister.
They are David Umahi, the minister of works, Doris Anite, the minister of industry, trade, and investment, Uche Nnaji, the minister of innovation, science, and technology, Nkiruka Onyejeocha, the minister of state for labor and employment, Uju Kennedy, the minister of women’s affairs.