Abia Monarch urges Igbo to despatch palliatives to earthquake devastated

Abia Monarch urges Igbo to despatch palliatives to earthquake devastated republic of Haiti

By : Gordi Udeajah, Umuahia

Date: 1 October 2021 3:58am WAT

Haitian migrants rest outside a shelter as they awaits for their immigration resolution in Monterrey, Mexico, on September 28, 2021. - Almost all of the mostly Haitian migrants who had gathered on both sides of the US-Mexico border have left their makeshift camps, ending a standoff that had provoked a major border crisis for the Biden administration. (Photo by Julio Cesar AGUILAR / AFP)

The traditional ruler of Umuanyi autonomous community in Isiukwuato LGA Abia state, Eze Cletus Uwadiegwu Ogbonnaya has urged Igbo at home and in diaspora to mobilise and despatch palliatives that would give succor to the victims of the earthquake that devastated the Republic of Haiti in Caribbean.

He also requested the leadership of Ohaneze Ndigbo to go on a condolence visit to the people of Zambia on the death of their former president Dr. Kenneth Kaunda whom he stated, died months ago at the age of 97 years.

Ogbonna, the former journalist with the defunct Concord newspapers, said that by sending relief materials to Haiti, Ndigbo would be reciprocating and appreciating Haiti for according to the defunct Republic of Biafra diplomatic recognition in 1969 after the late Kuanda’s led Zambia, Cote d’Ivorie and Gabon did so.

He said that apart from recognizing the defunct Republic of Biafra, the poor Island nation (Haiti) also mobilised relief materials for the (then) starving millions of people after the legendary Swedish Humanitarian pilot, Count Von Rosen who became the first Pilot that flew into the defunct Republic of Biafra with his MINICON Swedish Jet Plane at the age of 67 in 1969.

The traditional ruler in a press statement noted that the second earthquake that hit the Caribbean nation in the last eleven years, came after the first one that occurred in 2010 during the days of former President Peter Aristetide, a Roman Catholic clergyman.

According to him, the latest earthquake reported to be more devastating than the first one, has triggered off a wave of mass migration to Mexico and the State of Texas U.S. for which 13,000 of them have been declared illegal immigrants by the President Joe Biden Administration and are being flown to Port Au Prince, the Haitian capital since Monday last week.

He said: “ Now is the time for the Igbo people of Nigeria at home and diaspora to remember their kits and kin of the Republic of Haiti rated to be one of the poorest countries in the world.”

Going down memory lane, the Royal father explained that the black nation of Haiti were descendants of freed Igbo Slaves in the former French territory, who in the true Igbo Spirit against injustice and humiliation, overthrew their French colonial masters in 1830.

“ With their victory over the French, Haiti became the first Black free country in the world, he explained.