Apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, on Wednesday, strongly condemned a viral video in which a woman is heard threatening to poison people of Yoruba and Edo descent.

A woman in the video, tagged “name @Anyi_anambra on TikTok,” had asked Igbo people to “put poison in the foods of the Yoruba and Benin people” and promised to “encourage other Igbo to poison Yoruba and Benin people.”

The video further stated: “Let Ndigbo get heart of wickedness and start poisoning Yoruba and Edo. To put ota pia-paia, eat and die sniper, I will put it in Yoruba and Benin food for them to die.”

In a statement, Ohanaeze Ndigbo said it would have ignored the social media video clip as coming from “a deranged psychopath or one of the fictitious narratives which with the Internet device is twisted, dressed, coated, and delivered to the unsuspecting and obliging public,” adding, however, that it decided to respond due to calls from eminent persons who had expressed fears of some persons carrying out the threats.

Ohanaeze Ndigbo, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alex Ogbonnia, stated that though there is no sufficient evidence that the lady in question is Igbo, the call, however, was condemnable.

“She does not in any way portray the Igbo character of thoughtfulness, discretion, self-censure, and equanimity. There is no Igbo man or woman that will contemplate throwing a stone in a full market for the fear of who shall be the victim. In other words, the Igbo travel more than any ethnic group in Africa.

“They also create homes away from home wherever they are found. They mix up or integrate with the local community and contribute to developing every community they find themselves. Based on the foregoing, two major derivatives emerge: if one should poison food in Lagos or Ibadan or Benin, is there any guarantee that the first victim will not be Igbo? The lady must be a depressed drowning ethnic bigot, obsessed by the negative side of history and unflinchingly satanic in orchestration,” Ogbonnia stated.

He added that the Secretary-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Okey Emuchay, frowned at the video on social media. He said that Emuchay vehemently condemned both the video content and the perpetrator as a mischief-maker.
“They are the merchants of woes who deploy despicable and incendiary rhetoric to create ethnic mistrust and conflicts where none exists.

Ohanaeze Ndigbo seized this opportunity to enlighten the younger generations that the Igbo, Edo, and Yoruba share a lot in common. We share in cultural affinity, cosmology, morphology, and hospitality. The age-long inter-marriages between the Igbo, Yoruba, and Edo have produced well-accomplished great-grandchildren,” he added.

He assured the Afenifere, the entire Yoruba, and Edo brothers that the threat from the “depraved mind should be ignored,” adding that throughout history, proposals by the maladjusted are always dead on arrival.

“We use this opportunity to call on the security agencies in Nigeria to trace the perpetrators of this macabre dance to face the full weight of the law,” Ogbonnia said.