No crisis in Ohanaeze Ndigbo, committee insists

Apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, yesterday stated categorically that there was neither bickering nor division within its ranks.

Chairman, Peace and Harmonisation Committee of the organisation, Chief Onwuka Ukwa, who spoke yesterday in Enugu, the Enugu State capital, declared as “untrue” reports being peddled that crisis had again rocked the leadership of the organisation.

A group, led by chairman of the defunct Caretaker Committee of Ohanaeze, Chief Ralph Obioha, had reportedly after their meeting in Enugu at the weekend, alleged that the truce brokered recently by Imo Governor Rochas Okorocha on the leadership crisis rocking the organisation was being threatened by the alleged meddlesome role of the Chief Enwo Igariwey-led executive in the work of the electoral and constitution committee of the body.

They had alleged that the panel, which was part of the resolutions reached at the peace pact struck on February 15,2016, had been hijacked.

But Ukwa who spoke to reporters in reaction to the allegations stated: “What Ndigbo are now reading on pages of national dailies alleging breakdown of the Ohanaeze leadership peace accord is totally false. Those who attended a recent meeting of the defunct caretaker committee were just used as pawn for personal grievances against Governor Rochas Okorocha, for allegedly refusing to pay for phantom request on his government for a contract he knows nothing about.”

Ukwa, who is deputy to Obioha in the electoral and constitution committee, accused his boss of “deliberately trying to instigate a new crisis in the leadership of Ohanaeze, using some people as his stooges, while himself have embarked on overseas trips.”

He stressed that those being used to instigate a new crisis in Ohanaeze has no locus standi to do so as according to him “the so-called Ohanaeze caretaker committee has since ceased to exist, aftermath of the peace accord reached on February 16, 2016 at Imo State Government House.”