The 2023 presidential and governorship elections have been held and winners declared but the dusts raised by the outcome of both the presidential and governorship elections are yet to settle. If anything, the situation only appears to be getting more aggravated and tension filled. And the Igbo are at the center of it all. They are feeling cheated and robbed by INEC. They insist the election results were rigged in favour the eventual winner, the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. According to them, their kinsman and presidential candidate, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, is the deserving winner of the presidential election. And same with the governorship election in Lagos too, they claim they were harrassed, beaten and prevented from voting, and that despite all of these, they still won the governorship election but results were rigged in favour of the APC.
For these reasons, the Igbo are very bitter. They are angry with the system and they are not holding back their resentment. They have vowed to do everything within their power to stop the May 29 inauguration of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu government from taking place. And to this end, the Labour Party has gone to court to challenge the results, they have held several protests within and outside the country, written petitions to the US government and have vowed that they will make the country uncomfortable for everyone should the winner of the presidential election, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, be sworn in as the 16th president of the federal republic of Nigeria. This display of bitterness over the election has pitched the Igbo, it appears, against the Yoruba, the Hausa and perhaps the rest of the country who feel the Igbo have no right to scuttle the democratic process just because their preferrede candidate lost the election. After all, the immediate past president lost, he did not call for war, President Buhari had lost three times before he finally won, the country did not go on its knees. Even Atiku, a man reputed to have lost the elections a record six times, has never asked his supporters to burn down the country, so why should the Igbo dare to do things differently by bringing the country to the precipice of anarchy? This is the position of those who do not share the sentiments of Peter Obi and his horde of Igbo supporters.
The recklessness of the Obidients has not helped matters either. The group, consisting largely of young people who support Obi unconditionally, have become a thorn in the flesh of many who hold views different from their own. They take no prisoners. They take on anyone and everyone who stands in their way. Their resolve to pull down the country unless their preferred candidate is declared the winner of the election has left many pondering on the dangers of having an Igbo president occupying Aso Rock. Many Nigerians from different parts of the country have also expressed their fears and concerns should power be given to the Igbo.
One of the groups to first publicly express their fear over an Igbo presidency months before the 2023 Presidential election took place is the Coalition of Northern Groups, CNG. They made it clear that the Igbos cannot be trusted with power.
CNG’s spokesman, Abdulazeez Suleiman, said Igbos could not be trusted with power because their elders posed a national threat following their recent warning of disrupting Nigeria if they can’t produce the country’s next President. Suleiman said the same Igbo elders calling for the release of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, were the ones still agitating for Presidency in 2023.
He said, “Similarly, groups of Igbo leaders and elders have engaged in desperate covert and overt efforts to secure the unconditional release of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the IPOB terror group standing trial for crimes against the state.
“As if these were not enough, the same group of Igbo elders again recklessly issued a national security threat on May 4, 2022, that any attempt to elude the zone of the Presidency in 2023 may rupture the existence of Nigeria as a corporate entity as well as aggravate crisis, conflicts, separatist demands, and others. This has deepened the fears that the Igbo cannot and should never be trusted with presidential power.”
Even the Chairman of DAAR Communications Plc, Chief Raymond Dokpesi says the separatist activities of Nnamdi Kanu, detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) would jeopardise the chances of the South-East region to produce the president of Nigeria in 2023.
He stated that the emergence of IPOB and its influence across the South-East “has complicated and undermined the agitation for patriotic Nigerians of Igbo extraction to lead this nation as far as the 2023 is concerned.
The PDP chieftain added that if an Igbo President is voted in, Kanu would use militant tactics to blackmail and force the President to declare the South-East independent of Nigeria.
He said, “On the surrender of Biafra to Nigeria, Yakubu Gowon, declared ‘no Victor, no vanquished’ but clearly, since, the regions that have determined leadership have used this against the South-East and denied Igbos the opportunity to lead. Should that be used against the leaders and sons of the South-East today? Of course not!
”I have publicly come out to support and call on a Southeastern presidential candidate in the recent past, but the emergence of IPOB and its influence across the South-East has complicated and undermined the agitation for patriotic Nigerians of Igbo extraction to lead this nation as far as the 2023 election is concerned.”
The reason for the fear of an Igbo presidency did not start today. The Nigeria civil war laid the foundation for this fear. The rest of Nigeria feels an Igbo President will only prepare the precedence for a Biafra nation and possibly a Yoruba nation to follow. The question many concerned Nigerians are asking is, why would the Igbo be asking for a Biafra nation and in another breath be asking for the presidency? It does not add up.
Again, the Igbo have also not helped matters with the level of aggression they have shown so far in their quest to stop the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu from being sworn in and have their preferred candidate, their kinsman, Peter Obi, declared as the winner. They have staged all manner of protests, caused all kinds of incitements with their toxic and provocative remarks and have shown total disrespect for anyone who as much as tries to make them heed to the voice of reason. They even stormed the Defence Headquarters in Abuja, demanding that the military should intervene, take over government and set up an Interim Government that would possibly favour their beloved Peter Obi. Many have deemed most of their actions to be in bad taste, leaving thousands of Nigerians wondering how comfortable the rest of the country will be if the Igbo were given the power to rule Nigeria.
– WALE LAWAL
(08037209290)
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