The South-East chapter of the All
Progressives Congress says Igbo leaders who are opposing the probe of
former President Goodluck Jonathan are desecrating the Igbo tradition.
It said the Igbo leaders who are
supporting the former President are in breach of the traditional
admonition which forbids Igbo from identifying with thieves or alleged
thieves.
Several Igbo leaders, including the
Chairman of the Igbo Leaders of Thought, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, and the
Secretary-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Joe Nwaorgu, had in recent
times opposed President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to restrict the
planned probe to Jonathan’s administration.
They insisted that Jonathan’s government should not be probed unless other previous administrations were included.
However, reacting to the development on
Sunday, the South-East APC, in a statement by its spokesman, Mr. Osita
Okechukwu, told the Igbo leaders to stop desecrating Igbo tradition by
supporting Jonathan.
In the statement titled, ‘Stop
desecration of Igbo tradition’, Okechukwu wondered why Jonathan’s
defence was being championed by Igbo leaders, rather than the
ex-President’s Ijaw kinsmen.
The statement read, “The South-East zonal
chapter of the APC calls on Igbo leaders, in the name of defending our
dear ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, to stop the desecration of the long
standing Igbo tradition and by extension, our revered ancestors.
“Our worry is that the timeless Igbo
tradition which admonishes us not to steal, and not to defend or
associate with rogues or even alleged rogues is being flagrantly
breached by prominent Igbo sons, crying more than Ijaw sons and
daughters.
“We have yet to find any sentence where
any of them, even our revered icon, erudite and constitutional lawyer,
Prof. Ben Nwabueze, in any form denied the mindless, pervasive and
unbridled corruption which pervaded ex-President Jonathan’s regime.”
Okechukwu equally condemned Nwaorgu’s
advice that Buhari should extend the probe to the administration of
former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The South-East APC spokesman accused
Nwaorgu of deliberately blocking a planned meeting between Buhari and
Ohanaeze Ndigbo before the elections.
According to Okechukwu, Buhari conveyed
his request for the meeting, where he intended to “chart the way forward
with Ndigbo”, in a letter forwarded to the Ohanaeze Ndigbo secretariat
in November 2014.
The statement added, “May we appeal to
Chief Joe Nwaorgu and his cohorts, if actually the interest of Ndigbo is
what they are fighting for, to climb down from their high horses and
stop the hate narratives and embrace the true position that Ndigbo
stands to gain more from President Buhari’s regime, if ever we gained
from our massive support to former President Jonathan.”
The South-East APC argued that “Ndigbo
like all hardworking groups in the country” stand to gain more from
Buhari’s administration than Jonathan’s, which it accused of dispensing
patronage to cronies.
The party added that the Igbo were more
likely to realise their wish to have one of their own as President of
the country through Buhari.
According to Okechukwu “The Igbo ethnic
merchants and gossip-terrorists who bandy all manners of conspiracy hate
theories against President Buhari must come to terms that an eight-year
tenure of the man of uncommon integrity is the surest route to the
actualisation of President of Igbo extraction, given the zoning
convention.”
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