The pan-lgbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has warned the South-East, South-South youths to stop their agitation for Biafra, saying it will never work.
Rather than embark on secession protests, Ohanaeze urged the youths to give support to the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari for him to have a look at the dilapidated roads in the zone.
Chairman of the forum of state presidents of Ohaneze in the seven Igbo speaking states, Elder Chris Eluemunoh, who stated this at a press conference on Friday in Awka, Anambra State, said the apex Igbo body would never support agitation of Biafra as being demanded by the youth.
The seven states of Ohaneze included Anambra, Abia, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Delta and Rivers.
The South-East and some parts of South-South have in recent weeks witnessed mass protests by youths calling for the release of Nnamdi Kanu, Benjamin Onwuka and others held in detention by the federal government.
The youths demonstrated under the aegis of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) with few other members of the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) involved.
Distancing Ohanaeze from the protests, which have been viewed in some quarters as a ploy to distract the Buhari administration, Eluemunoh said that what the youths were doing could be described as pure madness, adding that it would have been a different ball game if they were protesting against the bad state of roads instead of agitation for Biafra.
According to him, “Ohanaeze as Igbo cultural group cannot support insurgency, we are totally against it and we will never support it.
“Anybody that has any issue with the federal government should go for dialogue with the president and that is why we went for national conference, Nigeria is a one united country and we do not want any other.
“I believe what the youths are doing is to call the attention of the president to see the infrastructural decay in the zone, this region has been abandoned and neglected and not by Buhari, but by previous administrations started by Olusegun Obasanjo which Goodluck Jonathan also tried to bring back.
“Ohanaeze is calling on the federal government to declare state of emergency in the zone on roads for purposes of infrastructural development and that is what the youths are saying, we believe and not secession.
“Our president should forget what happened in the last election and Ohanaeze is going to give him full support through prayers and other means and in making sure that Nigeria stays as one indivisible entity.
“Therefore, the youths should stop such agitations for Biafra because Biafra died in 1970 and we are saying it again that Ohanaeze will never support it”, Eluemunoh warned.
However, the group said if Kanu and others, who were spearheading such agitation had committed any known offence, they should face the law, otherwise, they should be released.
The Ohanaeze chairman further debunked the allegation that the youths were being supported by top Igbo politicians, adding that if indeed they were getting any support from anywhere, it should be from outside Nigeria.
He said they believed that such restiveness by the youths could stop if roads like Oba-Okigwe road, Owerri-Portharcourt road, which Ohanaeze described as the worst in Nigeria, were fixed.
“What they call agitation for Biafra is not in the dictionary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo and we will never give it a look in, what Ohanaeze is saying is that president Buhari’s administration should be supported to move this country forward”, said Eluemunoh.
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