Ohanaeze urges immediate action to save Nigeria

• Says nation in agony, time for national healing

Apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, yesterday, declared that Nigeria may soon cease to exist as a country if urgent actions are not taken to check rising insecurity in the country.

Insisting that time had come to rethink, reflect and act to salvage the country, it expressed concern that the late Chinua Achebe’s prediction in his book: Nigeria: There Was A Country, might soon become “a self-fulfilling prophecy of national reality and tragedy foretold.”

President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Prof. George Obiozor, who spoke during a media briefing at Ohanaeze Secretariat in Enugu, noted that Nigeria was passing through one of the “worst times in virtually all aspects of our national life,” urging the leadership to learn from history and redirect the country to avoid disintegration.

He insisted that Nigeria’s unity was receding and fading fast with violence, crises, and conflicts, the rise of ethnic militias, agitations for secession, self-determination, insurgency, and banditry.

“Currently, Nigerians have no place to hide and since there is nothing new in history, posterity has solutions to these national problems. The Federal Government must, therefore, learn from history and not fight a war it cannot win against nationalism, but seek peaceful options to guarantee national unity and peaceful co-existence,” he said.

Obiozor also urged the Federal Government to reconsider the use of coercion in resolving the present national crises, stressing that from history, military and violent means to solve the national question were bound to fail and could lead to further fractionalisation, anarchy, and disintegration.

“Above all measures, the Federal Government should conspicuously embrace justice, equity, and fairness for peace, progress, unity, and development to thrive in Nigeria.

“The greatest problem for leadership anywhere in the world begins when the general public or citizens, the political elite become conscious of the existence of governance based on selective morality, outrageous paradox, and double standards,” he stressed.

He warned that the government should not allow citizens alienation, as it would result in loss of integrity, prestige, diminishing legitimacy, and authority of the government, adding that no government should get to the point where people would doubt about its decisions on matters of national interest and destiny.

“It is high time the government and people started the healing process, Nigeria is in agony and pains, it is time for national healing,” he added.

Obiozor, who commended the southeast governors for forming the Ebubeagu regional security outfit, urged Ndigbo to support it to enable it to succeed.

On the Indigenous People of Biafra’s (IPOB) Eastern Security Network (ESN), he pointed out that he was not against anything of interest to Ndigbo, adding that the ESN and Ebubeagu have one mandate, but different methods.

He, added, however, that the constitutional mandate for the security of the South East rested squarely on the governors of the zone.