- With Biafra, Igbo'll remain in Nigeria, says Nnamdi Kanu
- 16 northern groups give Igbo October 1 to vacate region
- Arewa Youths Write Osinbajo
- Presidency replies Arewa youths letter to Osinbajo on Biafra secession
- Igbo youths to Northern group: We're not afraid of war
- Open letter to Prof Ango Abdullahi
- OPEN LETTER TO THE AREWA YOUTHS.
- Igbo dare Arewa: We won't leave North …demand Ango Abdullahi's arrest
- The quit notice to Igbo in the North
- Southern leaders demand Arewa youths to withdraw ultimatum.
- Igbo quit notice: Pan Yoruba group calls for Oodua Republic
- PRESS RELEASE BY THE MIDDLE BELT YOUTH COUNCIL.
- The Igbos Have Paid For Their Sins- Emir Sanusi
- THE YOUTHS OF ODUDUWA REPUBLIC LAGOS DECLARATION – 10TH JUNE 2017
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With Biafra, Igbo'll remain in Nigeria, says Nnamdi Kanu
Written by Ihuoma Chiedozie and Tony Okafor
~PUNCH Nigeria. Tuesday, July 25, 2017.
 |
| Nnamdi Kanu |
The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, on Monday, said Igbo must not vacate the North, or any other part of the country, as a condition for the actualisation of the agitation for Biafra.
The IPOB leader spoke in an interview with some journalists in Enugu, where he received awards from a number of pan-Igbo groups, including the Igbo Women Assembly, the Eastern Consultative Assembly and the Igbo Students Union.
Reacting to the 'quit notice' issued to Igbo in the North by a coalition of Arewa youths, Kanu noted that secession from Nigeria did not imply that Igbo must leave the North, or other part of the country as suggested by the ultimatum issued by the northern youths.
He said, "You are aware that Scotland is seeking to leave the United Kingdom? Are you remotely implying that every person from Scotland, who lives in England, should now return to Scotland?
"Britain just left the EU. Are you now implying that every British citizen in the EU should come back to Britain in order to finalise that process of extraction of Britain from the EU?"
Kanu noted that what he described as "poor education" was responsible for the impression that Igbo must leave other parts of Nigeria in the event of the actualisation of Biafra.
The Biafran agitator added that he would not take issue with the Arewa youths, who he described as "inconsequential."
Kanu, nonetheless, warned that Igbo, who resided in the North, were doing so at their own peril.
According to him, Igbo resident in the North are "sacrificial lambs" who could be killed at any moment.
Asked if Igbo in the North should ignore the notice to quit, the IPOB leader stated, "It is up to them. They have been in the North, and they (northerners) have been killing us (Igbo) since 1945.
"If you choose to live in the North, you choose to be a sacrificial lamb because one day, they will kill you. It is a choice they have made and they will have to live with it."
Kanu insisted that the governorship poll in Anambra State, scheduled to hold on November 18, 2017, would not hold unless the Federal Government acceded to pro-Biafran agitators' demand for a referendum.
Asked if he was not bothered that Ohanaeze Ndigbo had overruled his call for the boycott of the poll, Kanu said he was in charge of the people "100 per cent."
He added, "No, I'm not (bothered) because the people are with us. We control the people 100 per cent and come Anambra, on the 18th of November, 2017, the whole world will be amazed."
Although he said he was certain that the people of Anambra would boycott the election, Kanu said IPOB did not intend to stop anybody who decided to vote.
"We are entirely peaceful. We are not stopping anyone from voting. If you want to vote, you can go and vote. We are democrats," he said.
Kanu added that the planned referendum would, once and for all, settle the debate between Biafra and restructuring.
The IPOB leader said, "We are calling for a referendum so that the people can actually decide, once and for all, what they want, for themselves; not anybody deciding for them.
"I have not argued Biafra from the standpoint of absolutism. I am not saying you must vote for Biafra. I am asking the powers that be in Nigeria to allow the people to determine for themselves."
Reacting to his bail conditions, the IPOB leader said the court, which barred him from granting interviews, could not stop him from speaking.
He said, "I am not giving an interview, I am responding to the question you asked me. The judge is a very learned fellow. She cannot stop me from speaking."
Earlier, Kanu had assured a delegation of the Igbo Women Assembly, led by Mrs. Maria Okwor, that the menace posed by Fulani herdsmen in parts of the South-East "would come to an end before the end of the year."
He equally told members of the Igbo Students Union, who honoured him with the title of 'Light of the People', to join IPOB and propagate the struggle for Biafra on the social media.
Meanwhile, IPOB, on Monday, alleged that some top politicians were plotting to kill Kanu, its leader, and other principal officers of the group.
It said huge amount of money and political patronages had been offered to certain people to execute the plot.
In a statement by the group's Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, IPOB said any attack on Kanu would radicalise the Biafra struggle in a manner nobody could stop.
The group named certain governors, an elder statesman, a socio-cultural organisation, a security chief and a religious head as some of those masterminding the plot.
The statement added, "But we promise them that any attack on Nnamdi Kanu or assassination attempt will radicalise the struggle for Biafran independence to the point which no one can contain.
"We are reminding those evil plotters that if anything happens to our leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who has been using non-violent methods for Biafran liberation since the inception of IPOB, that they will experience what they have not seen before since the creation of the contraption called Nigeria by the British."
---------------------------------------16 northern groups give Igbo October 1 to vacate region (Video)
~TheGuardian Nigeria. Wednesday, June 7, 2017.
• Relatives in S' East to return home
• Seek global observers to witness dissolution of Nigeria
• MASSOB accepts quit notice, Afenifere warns
Sixteen northern youth groups rose from a joint meeting in Kaduna yesterday to give Igbo residing in
their states up to October 1, 2017 to vacate the region. This came days after the shutting down of major towns in the South East on May 30, 2017 as part of the campaign by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) for the actualisation of Biafra Republic.
The action of the northern youths shows that the agitations for self-determination are spiraling out of control. The nation's leaders need to immediately intervene to stop these agitations from resulting in violence that may consume the entire nation.
The youth organisations in attendance at the Kaduna meeting included Arewa Citizens Action for Change, Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Arewa Youth Development Foundation, Arewa Students Forum and Northern Emancipation Network on the Igbo Persistence for Secession.
Mallam Abdulazeez Suleiman who read the statement issued on behalf of others at the Arewa House in Kaduna, said the North was tired of the political marriage existing in the country, hence the need for restructuring as being canvassed by many notable Nigerian leaders, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
"The persistence for the actualisation of Biafra by the unruly Igbo of South-Eastern Nigeria has lately assumed another alarming twist which involved the forceful (sic) lockdown of activities and denial of other people right to free movement in the South-East by the rebel IPOB and its overt and covert sponsors.
"This latest action and similar confrontational conducts which amount to a brutal encroachment on the rights of those termed as non-indigenous people residing and doing lawful businesses in those areas illegally demarcated and defined as Biafra by the Igbo, are downright unacceptable and shall no longer be tolerated," the northern youths said.
Alleging persistent Igbo threat to national integration, the northern youth said they had met with several other people in their region and reviewed the current position of the North and jointly came up with the declaration.
The statement further reads: "The Igbo people of the South-East, without remorse for the carnage they wrought on the nation in the 1960s, are today boldly reliving those sinister intentions connoted by the Biafran agitation that led to the very first bloody insurrection in Nigeria's history.
"Emboldened by the apparent indifference of the Nigerian authorities, the Igbo secessionist tendency is widening in scope and action at every stage, with adverse effects on the law-abiding people of other regions residing in or passing through the East, while the Igbo leaders and elders by their utterances and direct action or inaction appear to support and encourage it.
"This is happening irrespective of the undisputable fact that Igbo have done and are doing more damage to our collective nationhood than any other ethnic group; being responsible for the first violent interference with democracy in Nigeria resulting in a prolonged counter-productive chain of military dictatorship.
"It is on record that since the inception of the current democratic dispensation, the Igbo have shown and maintained open contempt and resentment for the collective decision expressed by majority of Nigerians at various stages via generally acceptable democratic processes.
"While these provocative acts of aggression persist and grow in dimension with each new move, leaders of the North whose people are at the receiving end of the threats, appear helplessly unperturbed.
"Without pursuing a resolute action-plan, these northern leaders have adopted and have been dragging their people into a pitifully pacifist position in order to sustain an elusive national cohesion that has long been ridiculed by the Igbo.
"From today, June 6, 2017, when this proclamation is signed, the North, a critical player in the Nigerian project, hereby declares that it will no longer be disposed to coexisting with the Igbo and shall take definite steps to end the partnership by pulling out of the current federal arrangement.
"This conclusion is necessitated by the realisation that it since (sic) ceased to be comfortable or safe to continue sharing the same country with the ungrateful, uncultured Igbo who have exhibited reckless disrespect for the other federating units and stained the integrity of the entire nation with their insatiable criminal obsessions.
"Rather than certain sections holding the whole country to ransom at every stage, each should be allowed to go its own way as we categorically proclaim today that the North is fed up with being in the same country with this pack of acrimonious Igbo partners.
"The North hereby openly calls on the authorities and other national and international stakeholders to acknowledge this declaration by taking steps to facilitate the final dissolution of this hopeless union that has never been convenient to any of the parties.
"As a first step, since the Igbo have clearly abused the unreciprocated hospitality that gave them unrestricted access to, and ownership of landed properties all over the North, our first major move shall be to reclaim, assume and assert sole ownership and control of these landed resources currently owned, rented or in any way enjoyed by the ingrate Igbo in any part of Northern Nigeria.
"Consequently, officials of the signatory groups to this declaration are already mandated to commence immediate inventory of all properties, spaces or activity in the north currently occupied by the Igbo for forfeiture at the expiration of the ultimatum contained in this declaration.
"With the effective date of this declaration, which is today, Tuesday, June 06, 2017, all Igbo currently residing in any part of Northern Nigeria are hereby served notice to relocate within three months and all northerners residing in the East are advised likewise."
The groups mandated all northern civil society and pressure groups to mobilise for sustained and coordinated campaigns at their respective State Government Houses, Houses of Assembly, Local Government Council Secretariats and traditional palaces for steps to be taken to ensure the enforcement of the 2directives .
"We are hereby placing the Nigerian authorities and the entire nation on notice that as from the 1st October 2017, we shall commence the implementation of visible actions to prove to the whole world that we are no longer part of any federal union that should do with the Igbo.
"From that date, effective, peaceful and safe mop-up of all the remnants of the stubborn Igbo that neglect to heed this quit notice shall commence to finally eject them from every part of the North.
"And finally, all authorities, individuals or groups are hereby advised against attempting to undermine this declaration by insisting on this union with the Igbo who have thus far proved to be an unnecessary baggage carried too far and for too long."
In its reaction, the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) said it received with gladness the "quit notice" and urged the Igbo to return home immediately.
MASSOB, in a statement by its leader Uchenna Madu said: "The latest quit notice by the coalition of northern youths under the umbrella of Arewa youths is not a surprise gift to Biafrans residing in Arewa land. MASSOB is aware that such rascality will happen. As a matter of fact, this is the only rascality exhibited by sponsored Arewa youths to forcefully (sic) exit the people of Biafra residing in Arewa land that MASSOB will hundred percent support. Their Boko Haram tactics didn't work as planned.
"MASSOB gladly received the good news of quit notice order to the people of Biafra living in Arewa land. We pledge our total support towards this divinely approved quit notice. MASSOB congratulates the Arewa political, religious, and traditional and opinion leaders who sponsored their youths wing by using Arewa House in Kaduna for this greatest meeting of a coalition of Islamic fundamentalists.
"MASSOB is hereby advising the people of Biafra mostly the Igbo living in Northern Nigeria (Arewa land) to take this quit notice serious (sic) as the plan to violently kill your children, wives and demolish your investments are already perfected. MASSOB will never fight or defend your lives and properties in Hausa Fulani land. The consciousness and realities of Biafra is highly overwhelming now."
Igbo youths under the aegis of Ohanaeze Youth Council (OYC), said the statement was capable of causing chaos in the country but urged the Igbo to remain "wherever they are and defend themselves if pushed to the wall."
One of the leaders of the Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo said the development was a bad signal for the country. Adebanjo called on the northerner leaders to urgently condemn the statement by the northerner youths by saying that they did not speak for the north. He also urged the Federal Government to make a statement on the issue "otherwise it has far-reaching implications to the unity of the nation. Otherwise nobody is afraid of separation. If the North wants to break, there is nothing wrong but the idea of giving ultimatum to a particularly set of people to vacate their region is unacceptable."
Earlier yesterday, Prof. Ben Nwabueze described the leader of IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, as a great Igbo man, stressing that marginalisation has robbed the Igbo of greatness.
Nwabueze, who spoke in Enugu when Kanu led the leadership of the Eastern Consultative Assembly (ECA) to his office, said that those undermining the agitation for secession were making a huge mistake.
"We are supposed to be one of the leading ethnic groups in Nigeria but today we are in the minority; we have been so marginalised. Nnamdi Kanu's case teaches that repression is seldom the right response to complaints and agitations for amelioration in the conditions of things in the society. Repression seldom settles grievances. If anything, it forces them underground.
"Another lesson to learn from Kanu's case is that this self-determination should be a graduated process. It should begin with regional autonomy. The country should be restructured into six more or less self-governing zones or regions, with the powers of the central government drastically reduced, so as to minimise the fierce contest for its control," the constitutional lawyer said.
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Arewa Youths Write Osinbajo
June, 19th 2017
His Excellency,
Professor Yemi Osinbajo,
Acting President,
Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Aso Rock Presidential Villa
Abuja
OPEN LETTER
Your Excellency,
APPRECIATION
On behalf of this coalition and all the peace-loving people of Northern Nigeria, we begin this letter by commending your efforts towards finding a lasting solution to the lingering Igbo-induced crisis that is undoubtedly overheating the polity.
We sincerely believe Your Excellency's good intentions as shown by your prompt and genuine actions towards ensuring peace and stability in holding talks with leaders of the North and the South-East.
Though we do not doubt Your Excellency's bona fide concerns for the peaceful resolution of the crises, we nevertheless have reservations as to the efficacy of this approach in ensuring lasting solutions.
Our doubts are informed by the following historical antecedents that have characterized the behavior and conduct of the Igbo in Nigeria and previous efforts at containing them.
PAST EXPERIENCES
1. The Igbo of Eastern Nigeria manifested their hatred for Nigeria's unity barely five years after we gained our independence from the British when on January 15, 1966, their army officers carried out the first-ever mutiny that marked the beginning of a series of crisis which has profoundly altered the course of Nigeria's history.
2. By that ill motivated, cowardly and deliberate action, the Igbo killed many northern officers from the rank of lieutenant colonel upwards and also decapitated the Prime Minister and the political leadership of the Northern and Western regions but left the zenith of Igbo leadership at the Federal level and the Eastern region intact.
3. In line with the Igbo plan, General Aguiyi-Ironsi took advantage of the vacuum and, instead of returning power to the remnants of the First Republic government, he appropriated the coup and attempted to consolidate it for his people.
4. Army officers of the Northern Region were eventually compelled to execute a counter coup on July 29, 1966 following a coordinated series of brazen provocations from the Igbo who taunted northerners on northern streets by mocking the way leaders of the region were slain by the Igbo. This unfortunately resulted in mob action which resulted in the death of many Igbos.
5. And when Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, from the North took over as Head of State following the counter coup, the Igbo through Lt. Col. Ojukwu, characteristically refused to recognize Gowon.
5. Ojukwu declared the secession of the Igbo people from Nigeria and the formation of the republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967 resulting in a civil war that led to the tragic deaths of more than 2 million Nigerians.
6. It is important to note here that the Igbo eventually capitulated and conceded defeat in an unconditional surrender, not an armistice, on January 15, 1970 which renders any talk about Biafra at any other time, a repudiation of the terms of that surrender signed by Phillip Effiong and other Biafran leaders.
BIAFRA REINCARNATED
1. In a shot out of the blues, the Igbo have over the last 2 years regrouped and fiercely and openly started discussing Biafra again under Ralph Uwazuruike of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State Of Biafra MASSOB.
2. This was given greater impetus by a more furious Igbo rogue group called the Indigenous People Of Biafra IPOB under Nnamdi Kanu who even operates an illegal radio station spreading hate and war messages across the nation, calling other ethnic groups all sorts of names and threatening them with violent extermination. (Ref: https://youtu.be/KIaMJU_bdbs,https://youtu.be/ozgQtmZu614 andhttps://youtu.be/MGwoq26nsIk ).
3. The activities of the Igbo under Kanu's IPOB has grown exponentially ranging from ordering people of other regions out of the South East - particularly the Yorubas and Hausa /Fulani from the South West and the North respectively, to open declaration of the amassing of arms and forceful total shutdown of the entire South-East. (Ref: https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.itrend247.com.ng/2016/03/breakingchaos-as-ipobmassob-orders.html%3Fm%3D0&ved=0ahUKEwiW8rvW88TUAhWFLFAKHeVCBm4QFggsMAY&usg=AFQjCNHg9_V3LC2cqHM_Q1Mu7pGl206Jyg&sig2=pZ6tM7DHshyaI4FqoQx79Q
4. KANU and IPOB have declared full allegiance to a "Republic of Biafra" and continue to preach hatred and war virtually every day, and not for once did any Igbo leader call them to order. Instead, many of the leaders including Mr Ike Ekweremadu, the deputy senate president, the most senior elected Igbo, pay Kanu courtesy calls to prove that he is speaking for the entire Igbo. It is glaring to all that Kanu has serially breached all the terms of his stringent jail conditions in total disregard to the sanctity of our justice system .
5. Even the latest statement by the South-East Governors Forum signed by Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State in a response to the Northern reaction, did not condemn Kanu and Uwazuruike but characterised their action as “peaceful”. Ref: https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.informationng.com/2017/06/igbo-quit-notice-press-release-south-east-governors-forum-must-read.html&ved=0ahUKEwiN57n09MTUAhWJZ1AKHW6eAkkQFgglMAI&usg=AFQjCNGENaGoryeq0zs3t8NRCqx0bjG6DA&sig2=n3AD6FKnapYUo16hcAJsCQ
6. While all this is going on, neither the Igbo political and cultural leaders nor other regional leaders of the North or West nor the international community or any religious body ever found it necessary to call these renegade groups to order or in the very least admonish their leaders to do so.
Furthermore, none of the Igbo leaders holding various positions in this government ever disowned IPOB or condemned its operations until lately with Governor Rochas Okorocha's mild condemnation after the Kaduna Declaration by our Coalition .
GROUNDS FOR SUSPICION
Given the unrepentant antecedents exhibited by the Igbo as highlighted above, we strongly believe that the gruesome picture that the Biafran agitation represents is beyond a few people showcasing to Your Excellency that the Igbo will eventually heed the call for peace and desist from their dangerous campaign against Nigeria.
The seed of hate planted in the name of Biafra is evidently so deep that the ongoing interaction between you and the leaders from the South East can not in our well informed opinion douse or address the underlying deep seated underlying problems (Ref http://jaguda.com/2013/08/14/video-chilling-documentary-of-a-war-time-massacre-the-legacy-of-the-asaba-massacres/).
We base our concerns on the following grounds.
1. Despite the fact that the Igbo have been the most accommodated and tolerated of all the ethnic groups of Nigeria, the renewed incessant, spiteful and vile threats and insults on Northern leaders and their people, culture and religions that are the targets of this venomous agitation for Biafra, can hardly be addressed through a series of two hours dialogues.
2. As if to prove this, barely hours after Your Excellency's meeting with the South-East leaders, the Biafran Igbo openly disowned the leaders and dissociated themselves from the meeting. (Ref: https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/06/ipob-to-osinbajo-your-meeting-with-igbo-leaders-without-kanu-unacceptable/&ved=0ahUKEwjHueSn8cTUAhVJI1AKHZmQD6wQFggqMAM&usg=AFQjCNHwiwuEKgcK9l5zQLUzfXyPu1aQ7A&sig2=HbfcbWt6wiZZfiDiXuz6MA
3. More disturbingly, Kanu has openly claimed that the Biafran agitators have amassed arms in readiness for a war of secession which is quite conceivable given the fact that since 2009, catches of dangerous weapons routinely smuggled into the country and occasionally intercepted by the Nigerian authorities , were all traced to Igbo sources.
(Ref: https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://247ureports.com/2014/05/25/boko-haram-three-suspected-arms-suppliers-arrested-in-enugu/&ved=0ahUKEwjVoNef8sTUAhUEYlAKHRRsB58QFghHMAg&usg=AFQjCNHlUhTYo4s8B0kQNz-0jeHR34MTDA&sig2=EEM5w7RzNKyGFvHnmjmBkA
4. The situation continues to be baffling and alarming and therefore unacceptable - especially with the Igbo political and opinion leaders openly legitimizing the violent comments, insults, threats, hate speeches and call to anarchy that the Biafrans led by Nnamdi Kanu are making against the North and the Nigerian state in general.
5. South-East leaders have instead, enthusiatically given Kanu the platform, patronage and symbolic legitimacy through an ignominious display of homage, reception and open embrace.
OUR CONCERNS
1. Concerned by the fact that the Biafrans have confessed to arming themselves for a violent breakup, we feel that it is risky for the rest of the country particularly the North to go on pretending that it is safe for us to co habitate with the Igbos given how deeply they are entrenched in our societies .
2. And since evidently the Igbo have not been sufficiently humbled by their self imposed bloody civil violence of 1966, we are strongly concerned that nothing short of granting their Biafran dream will suffice.
3. And since the Igbo have virtually infiltrated every nook and cranny of Northern Nigeria where they have been received with open arms
as fellow compatriots, we strongly believe that the region is no longer safe and secure in the light of the unfolding threats and the fact that for a long time, the Igbo have gone to extra ordinary lengths to ensure that in their domain in the South East, Northerners and Westerners are as much as possible disenfranchised from owning any businesses whereas in Kano alone, they own not less than 100, 000 shops across all the business districts.
4. That since the younger generation of Nigerians makes up for more than 60 percent of the nation's population, it is our hope that they inherit this country in better shape so that they can build a much better future for themselves and their offsprings in an atmosphere that is devoid of anarchy, hate, suspicion and negativity that characterize the polarized, and clearly irreconcilable differences forced on us by the Biafran Igbos.
5. To make a bad situation even worse, their leaders have continued to show support for this treacherous cause and thus giving credence to our concern that what they say against us is what they truly mean and intend - “Kill everyone in the Zoo” (North). Your Excellency, we cannot afford to discard this as mere mischief as the utterances that caused the terrible Rwandan genocide still resonates in our minds.
6. Lastly Sir, it is quite impossible to expect that other nationalities would simply stand by and watch while a certain ethnic group perpetrates all the above heinous misconducts that involve threats, call to violence and extermination, insults and songs of war without responding.
OUR STAND
While we unequivocally restate that we are not waging war or calling anyone to violence, we nevertheless are also not willing to continue tolerating the malicious campaign and threats of war that the Igbos have continued to wage against us.
Neither can we afford to continue giving the keys to our cities to a people whose utterances, plans and arrangements are clearly geared towards war and anarchy.
We therefore demand that the only enduring solution to this scourge that is being visited on the nation is complete separation of the states presently agitating for Biafra from the Federal Republic of Nigeria through a peaceful political process by:
1. Taking steps to facilitate the actualization of the Biafran nation in line with the principle of self-determination as an integral part of contemporary customary international law.
2. The principle of self-determination has, since world war II become a part of the United Nations Charter which states in Article 1(2), that one of the purposes of the UN is “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.
3. We submit that this protocol envisages that people of any nation have the right to self-determination, and although the Charter did not categorically impose direct legal obligations on member States; it implies that member States allow agitating or minority groups to self-govern as much as possible.
4. This principle of self-determination has since been espoused in two additional treaties: The United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 1 of both international documents promote and protect the right of a people to self-determination. State parties to these international documents are obliged to uphold the primacy and realization of this right as it cements the international legal philosophy that gives a people the right to self-determination.
4. As the Igbo agitations persist and assume threatening dimensions, we submit that there is need to ensure that they are given the opportunity to exercise the right to self-determination as entrenched under the aforementioned international statutes to which Nigeria is a signatory.
PRAYERS:
1. Aware that the right of self-determination in international law is the legal right for a “people” that allows them to attain a certain degree of autonomy from a sovereign state through a legitimate political process, we strongly demand for a referendum to take place in a politically sane atmosphere where all parties will have a democratic voice over their future and the future of the nation.
2. The Igbo from all over the country and in the Diaspora should be advised to converge in their region in the South-East for a plesbisite to be organized and conducted by the United Nations and other regional bodies for them to categorically to decide between remaining part of Nigeria or having their separate country.
3. That government should at the end of the plesbite implement whatever is agreed and resolved in order to finally put this matter to rest.
4. Lastly, we pray His Excellency to study the references forwarded with this letter dispassionately and decide who is more in the wrong between those who openly pledge allegiance to a country other than Nigeria backing it up with persistent threats of war and those of us whose allegiance remains with the Nigerian state but simply urge that the secessionists be allowed to actualize their dream peacefully throw universally entrenched democratic options.
CONCLUSION
Your Excellency, we want to reiterate our high respect for your office and acknowledge the efforts you are making to lower tensions. We assure you, as well-brought up northerners, we listen to the advise and cautions of our elders, and in particular, their concerns that we do not create the impression that any Igbo or any Nigerian will be harmed in the North. We assure you that we will defend the rights of every Nigerian to live in peace and have their rights protected.
While we do not see this clamour for Biafra as an issue over which a single drop of blood should be shed, we at the same time, insist that the Igbo be allowed to have their Biafra and for them to vacate our land peacefully so that our dear country Nigeria could finally enjoy lasting peace and stability.
Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
SIGNED:
Amb. ShettimaYerima
Joshua Viashman
Aminu Adam
Abdul-Azeez Suleiman
Nastura Ashir Sharif
~The SUN Nigeria. Monday, June 19, 2017.
The Presidency has reacted to Arewa youths' letter to Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, urging him to allow agitation for Biafra to succeed through peaceful means.
According to the Presidency, the ongoing consultations with leaders of thoughts and traditional rulers from the North and South-eastern regions of the country, following the escalation of ethnic tensions occasioned by the agitation for Biafra and the vacation order issued by Northern youths for Igbo to quit the North, was the best way to approach the issue.
A top Presidential source, who pleaded not to be named, told Daily Sun that, “our response is the ongoing consultations Mr. Acting President is engaged in with leaders of thoughts from both regions. It is the best way to get everyone to see reason. The Presidency doesn’t want to escalate the matter by responding to individual groups. The ongoing parley is the best approach.”
The coalition of northern youth groups that recently gave all Igbo persons resident in the North three months ultimatum to vacate the region had, in a letter on Monday urged Osinbajo to take allow agitation for Biafra to succeed through peaceful means.
The group, in an open letter to the acting president, urges him to take “steps to facilitate the actualisation of the agitation in line with the principle of self-determination as an integral part of contemporary customary international law”.
The coalition, while commending Osinbajo for initiating series of discussions with leaders from the north and south east, however, said going by recent events, the talks would not yield any positive results.
The letter, which was signed by five leaders of the group insisted that principle of self-determination has, since world war II become a part of the United Nations Charter which states in Article 1(2), that one of the purposes of the UN is "to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”.
” We submit that this protocol envisages that people of any nation have the right to self-determination, and although the Charter did not categorically impose direct legal obligations on member States; it implies that member States allow agitating or minority groups to self-govern as much as possible,” they said.
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Reactions:
It is shocking to see the extent people can go to achieve selfish aims. The North is now self-destructing. The President is sick and his Vice is acting. This has nothing to do with the Igbos. Trying to destabilize the country out of fear that constitutional processes could result in the South West taking over the presidency is very unwise.
Much more unwise is picking on the Igbos as a tool to achieve the destabilization plot. People should read between the lines and understand what is going on.
Once more the problem is between the core North and the Southwest and again attempt is being made to use Igbo as scapegoat. The North should be more innovative and think out how to pull themselves out of the hole they have fallen as they are fast losing old friends and alliances.
The Igbos sympathize with them but will not support lawlessness and irresponsible behaviour.
We expect the core North to use their brain instead of foolishly trying to destabilise Nigeria.
If that happens they will be the greatest losers.
Igbos should talk less and avoid responding to every reckless behaviour. The plan seems to be aimed at provoking the Igbos and using Igbo reaction as a ploy to scuttle constitutional democracy. Many of the people making reckless and hate comments now, will at the fullness of time be ashamed of themselves.
Again, I repeat, nothing concerns the Igbos in this palaver. The core North and the Southwest should sort themselves out. Igbos have learnt from history and will no longer be conned. This is my most humble submission.
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Igbo youths to Northern group: We're not afraid of war
~Vanguard Nigeria. Wednesday, June 7, 2017.
An Eastern group, Igbo Youth Movement, IYM, has said that Ndigbo are not afraid of war, which is a reply it has given to an eviction threat by a northern youth group ordering all Igbos to leave the north in three months or face physical attacks.
A statement allegedly issued by the Eastern groups founder, Evang. Elliot Ugochukwu-Uko, it described the eviction order by the Coalition of Northern Youths, CNY, as "childish," stressing that people of the South East are not afraid of war.
Evangelis Ugochukwu noted that rather than issue such threat, the group should write to the National Assembly and other world body to "urgently" conduct referendum so as to secure the future of the country.
"The statement from a hitherto unknown northern group is primed to deliver a message to the whole world that some people prefer bloodshed to peaceful restructuring of Nigeria.
"The non-existent group merely represents an attempt by the sectional security apparatchiks to intimidate the struggle to reconstruct Nigeria, in their blind and unintelligent attempt to sustain the clearly unworkable status quo.
"If they were serious, they would have addressed the FG to grant Biafra freedom to secede, but they are childishly targeting Igbo property in the North, without advancing total complete split of the country.
"Igbo property in the North have always been used to blackmailing our people, while the mindless oppression continues. We therefore plead with this unknown group to write to the National Assembly, northern leaders and the United Nations, to as a matter of urgency, grant a referendum on the future of Nigeria. That way, everybody will take them serious.
"Targeting our properties in the North do not frighten anybody, we are used to that. We beg them to amend their childish statement to demand for an early referendum. That would make more sense. Our people are living in hell already. We are not scared of war mongering, Referendum is the way to go."
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Open letter to Prof Ango Abdullahi
Vanguard News / 26th June, 2017.
By Prof. B.I.C Ijomah
Prof. Ango Abdullahi,
OUR attention has been drawn to your statements in Vanguard of Saturday, June 10, 2017. You are alleged to be in support of the call on the Igbo to quit. It is unfortunate, grossly unfortunate, that a scholar of your calibre will be so partisan as to be unable to see the wisdom in retaining Nigeria as a corporate entity. I know you have, in the past, been anti-Igbo.
*Prof Ango AbdullahiProf Ango Abdullahi
One would have thought that our education exposes us to a level where we can live even with our enemies. You said in the alleged publication that, “each year up to the time Nigeria gained its independence, none of the two regions East and West was able to produce for its self. I mean none of the Western and Eastern Regions had the money to effectively run the affairs of the region until they got financial support from the Northern Region.” It is this assumption of yours that I want to address.
First of all it is not true that the North had bailed out Eastern Region or the Western Region. But you claim that even before independence none of the regions could live without Northern subvention. Let me draw your attention to the facts before independence. You should read W.M.M Geary’s work titled “Nigeria under the British Rule” published by the Cass and Company Limited, London (1927).
Subsidizing the North
May I draw your attention especially to pages 124 and 125. You will see published, General Revenue for the Northern and Southern Protectorates before the Amalgamation and the Percentage of Total Revenue originating from the North (figures in pounds), 1903 to 1913. You will see that contrary to your argument, it was indeed the South that was subsidizing the North. I am reproducing the tables here for clarity.
I also draw your attention to Abstracts of Revenue, 1809 to 1913. You will also see that the North could not have survived without the Imperial grant and the support of the South. When you look at the third table, Northern Nigeria revenue paid by the South and the Imperial grant, it will disabuse your mind and show you that without the South and the Imperial grant, the Northern government/states could not have existed.
Indeed, one of the reasons for the amalgamation was the fact that the British colonial government was tired of carrying the burden of the North and they thought that by merging the Southern and Northern protectorates, the country would be stable. Indeed, the circumstances that forced the British government to amalgamate the Northern protectorate and the Southern protectorate on January 1, 1914 were motivated neither by political exigencies nor by a closer cultural understanding among the diverse elements of the conglomeration that was later to be called Nigeria. It is obvious that the primary interest of the British government was economic.
It was also obvious that the Northern protectorate, because of its geographical location and cloudy economic prospects, was not likely to be viable. In fact, the Lugard administration was finding it rather difficult to maintain the Northern protectorate which was already running into deficit. Testifying to the financial difficulty of the North and the anticipated prosperity that would follow the projected amalgamation of the Northern protectorate with the Southern protectorate, Lord Lugard reported that “the prosperity of the Southern protectorate as evidenced by the liquor trade, had risen by 57 per cent. In fact, the liquor trade alone yielded a revenue of One Million, One Hundred and Thirty-Eight Thousand pounds (£1,138,000) in 1913. This he believed was the result of amalgamation of the Lagos colony with the Southern protectorate.
The Northern administration could not have survived without the imperial grant-in-aid which in the year before the amalgamation stood at One Hundred and Thirty Six thousand Pounds, (£136,000) and had averaged Three Hundred and Fourteen Thousand, Five Hundred Pounds (£314,500) for the eleven years ending in March, 1912. Besides, the burden of financing the North seemed to have been resisted and bitterly criticized by the Southerners. The expenditure of the British tax payer’s money in financing a colonial territory was a contradiction of the British colonial policy enunciated sixty (60) years before by L. Gray which stipulated that “the surest test for the soundness of measures for improvement of an uncivilized people is that they should be self-supporting.”
Economic position
This is by L. Gray in The Colonial Policy of the Administration of Lord Russell, London: Cass and Company Limited, 1853, page 281″. Further, the Northern protectorate was not only land-locked but bounded by territories that fell under the influence of other European powers. It was, therefore, inconceivable how the economic position would have improved without aid from the South.
The only alternative open to Lord Lugard was to amalgamate the North and the South and thus have a legitimate reason for the expenditure of revenue from the South in developing the North. Details of this manouevre was laid bare in a letter written by Lord Lugard on November 22, 1912 to his wife explaining how he had used the Southern resources to finance the Northern deficit.
Regardless of the merit which Sir F.D Lugard saw in his financial amalgamation of the South and the North, the prevalence of bitter criticism in the South shows the unpopularity of the amalgamation. At that time, the export from the South stood at Five Million, One Hundred and Twenty-Two Thousand Pounds (£5,232,000) while the export from the North stood at Two Hundred Thousand Pounds (£200,000) in 1910. This was very discouraging to the colonial system and called for urgent remedy. On Tuesday, January 31, 1911, there were attacks on the colonial secretary’s suggestion that the South should advance a loan of Two Hundred Thousand Pounds (£200,000) to the North for the completion of the Baro to Kano railway, in addition to the sum of One Million, Two Hundred and Thirty Thousand which was required from the South.
One of the criticisms of the Northern dependence on the South was voiced out by Honourable Sapara Williams who contended that before the loan was to be granted, the Secretary of State should settle the type of relationship that existed between Lagos and Zungeru, the two administrative headquarters for the South and the North respectively.
Existing hostility
He contended that as far as he was concerned, that the Southerners were strangers to anything connected with the railway after it has passed Offa, the last Yoruba town on the line. He referred to the existing hostility between the North and the South, particularly as regards the issues of extending the Northern boundary of the Southern protectorate to incorporate Yoruba territories now locked up in the Northern protectorate.
My dear Professor, the hostility of the Northerners towards the Southerners is not new in the Nigerian history. Even during the time of Sapara Williams, the Northerners did not see anything reasonable in the relationship with the South.
You will recall the massacres of the Igbos in Jos in 1945; you will recall the massacres of the Igbos in Kano in 1953; you will recall the massacres that preceded the civil war. If we cannot live together, Mr. Professor, don’t you think that it is high time we told ourselves the naked truth. You will also recall that in 1964, after the crisis that followed the elections, that Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe had called on Nigerians to call a round table conference to discuss how we could share our assets if it was impossible for us to live together. We kept on patching this unpatchable relationship. In my honest opinion, this relationship has soured enough that it will take the wisdom of God to make us love one another.
We went to Aburi and there the leaders agreed that the only solution to our problems was to have a confederation but Gowon reneged. You will recall also that the British government, after the crisis of 1951-1952, realized that this country could not be a unitary state and they brought in the 1953 constitution which gave us regional autonomy. If the colonial masters in their wisdom knew that we could not be a unitary government and gave us what we had at independence, we should have respected their wisdom. You will also recall that after the civil war, the regional autonomy which our independence conferred on us was violated by the military government led by the Northern soldiers. We ended up having this contraption that we are having now; it has not worked. It will not work, unless there is proper restructuring of the nation. We should stop pretending.
I believe in all sincerity that if we cannot accommodate every segment of the federation in one Nigeria, we should call a constitutional conference to decide how this country can be restructured so that every area can take care of itself and we can relate on certain agreed basis. We have slaughtered ourselves enough. We do not want another civil war in order to justify the existence of “One Nigeria”.
May I humbly call on all Nigerians to examine the last constitutional conference which addressed the issue of restructuring. Let us not leave it to our youths to tell us when we can stay together or when we cannot stay together. The youths in Biafra are crying; the youths in the North are crying; the Niger Delta youths are crying. The middle belt is not happy with what is happening to them.
Added to these, the strategies of the herdsmen to penetrate every nook and corner of Nigeria, is raising some issues for national discourse. The Federal Government has deliberately refused to call the herdsmen to order. They have killed many people and ravaged many communities. None of them has been arrested. Why? In May 2016, I published two articles and warned that the activities of the herdsmen was a plot which would soon cover the whole country. The heavy silence of the Federal Government tends to support the view that the herdsmen are on an undisclosed mission which only time would tell.
The Government must listen to the call for restructuring in order to have a workable nation. The military, for partisan reasons, jettisoned the independence constitution and foisted an unworkable constitution on Nigeria. Let us be humble and accept that we made a gross mistake by throwing away our independence constitution. It is now clear that unless we return to a structure that guarantees regional autonomy, there will be no peace in this country. The earlier we returned to regional autonomy the better for us.
Regional autonomy
I want you to look at the tables I have given you to see that your postulation that the North, before independence, had been carrying the burden of the South is a fallacy. The statistics I have given you here were not compiled by me. They were compiled by the colonial government in 1809 and 1813. They show that the North has always been the Southern burden. Even in this administration, without the resources from the South, the North cannot make it. This is a gospel truth. But if the North believes it can go without the South, what prevents us from restructuring so that the North can be on its own and the South can be on its own.
Let us call on our government to look seriously at this unworkable structure called Nigeria. We must not allow our youths to be slaughtered again defending the indefensible. This federation as it is, is unworkable.
My dear Professor let us come together as scholars and look at our country very objectively. You may also want to read some of my works such as: Nigerian Nationalism & the Problems of Socio-Political Integration and Quo Vadis (Where Are You Going) Nigeria?& Other Essays.
My sincere regards
Prof. B.I.C Ijomah
CONCLUDED.
Prof. B.I.C Ijomah is a professor of Political Sociology. He has lectured at Northwestern University in Chicago and Evanston, USA. He has been a university Registrar; Professor and Dean Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He has worked at University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Loyola University of Chicago, USA; Federal University of Technology, Akure and Ambrose Alli University from where he retired voluntarily to set up his own educational institution. He is a co-founder of South-South Peoples, Conference and a leader in PANDEF.
The post Open letter to Prof Ango Abdullahi appeared first on Vanguard News.
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OPEN LETTER TO THE AREWA YOUTHS.
By Charles Ogbu.
Brethren from the North,
I bring you greetings from the Southern part of Nigeria.
On behalf of the peace-loving people of the south in general and millions of Igbo youths in particular, I start this letter by commending you for your recent open letter to the acting president, professor Yemi Osinbajo, where you called on the pastor-turned politician to organise a Referendum for the Igbos to enable them determine their future in line with international law on self determination.
By that letter, you proved to be better versed and more sophisticated in legal matters and ways of international laws with regards to the right of Indigenous People on Self Determination than the acting President who ironically is a law professor but who happen to think that quest for self determination is a crime simply because the fraudulent document known as the 1999 constitution imposed on us by military thugs did not recognise it.
Having said these, let me come to the main reason why I'm here. In your letter to the Ag. President, I noticed what I've been trying to figure out whether to classify as an innocent amnesia-induced oversight or a calculated attempt to re-write history on your part.
You cited the January 15th coup which you mischievously tagged Igbo coup and claimed was the Igbos manifestating their hatred for Nigeria. Quite frankly, when I read that part, I was left wondering whether to pause and die laughing or die crying.
You and your kind invented the word "hatred" and even went further to prove that indeed, it is not just a word. You started manifesting hatred for other Nigerians as far back as 1945 when your kind butchered hundreds of innocent southerners mostly Igbos in North central Nigerian city of Jos in an anti-Igbo pogrom, 15 years before Nigeria even got her independence from Britain. And of course, your Vampiric spirit would later rise again in search of more Igbo blood in 1953 when your people carried out another anti-Igbo pogrom in Kano which resulted in another hundreds of Igbo lives being wasted once again. This time, all you needed to start doing what you know how best to do was a minor legislative disagreement at the Lagos parliament where your lawmakers were booed for trying to delay a motion for Nigeria's independence by claiming the North wasn't yet ready for self rule.
Isn't it a classic definition of irony that a people who started doing exceptionally well in the business of killing and maiming their fellow Nigerians as far back as 1945 when Nigeria had not even dreamt of gaining independence would now open their mouth and accuse others of manifesting "hatred for Nigeria unity"? If you ever believed in the so called Nigeria's unity, why kill and maim your fellow Nigerians for the flimsiest of excuses??
Secondly, the January 1966 coup was not an Igbo coup. It was a coup carried out by mostly junior army officers led by Major Kaduna Chukwuma Nzeogwu and it had soldiers from Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa/fulani, Tiv, Esan, Ijaw, Urhobo, Bali etc on board. Hassan Usman Katsina, an hausa/fulani, who was later made military governor of Northern region, was Nzeogwu's right hand man and a major participant all through the period of the coup. Major Adewale Ademoyega, the author of "Why We Struck" was of the same rank as Nzeogwu. He was an active participant in the coup. There were major Ifeajuna, Lt. Fola Oyewole of "The Reluctant Rebel", Lt. Tijani Katsina and Saleh Dambo who were both hausa/fulani, there was Lt. Hope Harris Egheagha among other Igbos.
And that same coup was foiled by two brave Igbo men, Aguyi Ironsi in Lagos (West) and Ojukwu in Kano (North).
Now, assuming WITHOUT CONCEDING that the January 15th coup was organized and executed by only Igbo army officers, does it not still amount to conscientious idiocy for you guys to blame the whole Igbo nation for a coup carried out by few military men from the region?? How can anyone seek to justify the savagery visited on defenceless Igbo men, women and children residing in the North in the aftermath of that coup?? Did Nzeogwu who was from Delta state consult the indigens of the state before leading that coup?
How come we don't blame Dimka's coup on his ethnic group neither do we blame IBB and Buhari's coup on the whole hausa/Fulanis?
Let me quickly remind you that in the evening of the January 15th coup, a Boeing 707 belonging to the Nigerian Airways arrived Kano with almost the whole Northern establishment back from Lagos where they had gone to attend Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference. Ojukwu, it was, who received them at the airport and even when orders from the coup plotters were to shot all Politicians, Ojukwu gifted them with protection. I don't suppose you would like this kind of history, seeing as it seem to contradict the adulterated version you were groomed with.
In the said letter, you correctly stated that Ojukwu refused to recognize Gowon but you mischievously failed to state that Ojukwu's refusal to recognise Gowon was in protest over the refusal of the hausa/fulani military officers who killed the head of state, Aguyi Ironsi, to allow Brigadier Ogundipe to take over as the next in rank according to military tradition.
Still in that same letter, you stated that Ojukwu declared Biafra but you conveniently failed to tell the public that Ojukwu didn't just wake up in the morning, smoke his Benson cigarette and rushed to declare Biafra. He (Ojukwu) did his best to de-escalate tension and even succeeded in reaching a landmark accord with Gowon in Aburi, Ghana, which if implemented, would have put an end to the Igbo genocide going on in the North and averted the moral tragedy that was the Biafra war. But, Gowon, unilaterally chose to defy the terms of this last minute Aburi Accord, leaving the Oxford product, Ojukwu, with no choice but to pull his people out of a country that was and still is, deaf, dumb and blind to the sanctity of the lives of the same people it exists mainly to protect.
Let me quickly say this not just to you, The Arewa Youths but to all Nigerians and foreigners alike:
This current Biafra agitation IS NOT a bait for Igbo presidency, Restructuring or appointments. Any Igbo man thinking it is should simply go for a DNA test to ascertain not just his paternity but his ancestry, too. My generation is simply sick and tired of sharing the same country with people who derive enormous pleasure from killing their fellow human beings over the flimsiest of excuses like the burning of the Koran in a far away Afghanistan, the shooting of a Palestinian boy by a murderous Israeli soldier in Gaza, the drawing of the cartoon of Prophet Muhammad in far away Denmark by a cartoonist who is neither Igbo nor Nigerian.
Igbo youths are not aggrieved with Nigeria solely because their parents were massacred in the Biafra war. We are aggrieved because almost 50 years after the war, the same people who killed our parents are still killing us even in our homes using fulani herdsmen, in our churches and cities using hausa/fulani soldiers who kill us and bath us with acid, and our places of business using almajiris who slaughter us and burn our shops with state-sponsored impunity for no just cause other than the insatiable urge to spill blood.
My fellow youths, we have lied to ourselves for far too long. How about a little honesty here? All these killings points to one thing which is that our world views are world apart. While you delight in resorting to violence as solution to almost every disagreement, we, the Igbos and indeed, all southerners have serious aversion to bloodshed. It is our belief that our God fight for us, not the other way round.
I love the concluding part of your letter where you rightly asserted that the Biafra agitation is not an issue over which a single drop of blood should be shed. We agree completely. We have all advanced beyond the primitive era of war. We are not asking for war. We are only asking for a YES or NO vote known as Referendum. Now, my dear brethren, add a little work to your faith by prevailing on your leaders who control every facet of the Nigerian govt to allow for a Plebiscite for the Igbos. After they have voted and the YES vote carries the day, you can then give Igbos living in your region whatever condition under which you want them to live if they still want to continue living in your midst.
Dishing out quit notice to Igbos residing in your region when they are yet to be officially granted their referendum and Biafra is only tantamount to putting the cart before the horse. Until the Igbos officially get their Biafra, they remain Nigerians with all the right and privileges of Nigerian citizens including the right of living and doing business anywhere in Nigeria.
Lastly, let me conclude by reminding you that even in the event of a successful referendum for Biafra, all property legally acquired by the Igbos anywhere in Nigeria remain theirs and are protected by international law. Nigerians did not loose their property in Britain when the latter granted her independence in 1960, did they?? The world has progressed considerably. I would remind you that the 'abandoned property' era is over but I'm sure you know that, don't you??
Instead of killing ourselves and creating IDPs everywhere, let us peacefully do "To Your Tent, Oh, Israel!". That way, we will still do things together but as good neighbours under a mutually agreed terms.
Love From A Biafran,
Charles Ogbu
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Igbo dare Arewa: We won't leave North …demand Ango Abdullahi's arrest
~Punch Nigeria. Sunday, June 11, 2017.
The quit notice to Igbo in the North
Tribune Nigeria. Monday, June 12, 2017.
ON Tuesday, June 6, Nigeria's fragile ethnic relations witnessed yet another deadly blow. Fifteen groups of youths from the northern part of the country under the aegis of the Coalition of Northern Youth Groups (CNYG) issued an ultimatum to the Igbo ethnic stock living in that part of the country to, within three months, quit their land, an ultimatum which they said would expire on October 1. At first, the ultimatum sounded like a joke from some idle youths. The expectation from the rest of Nigeria was that elderly Nigerians from that part of the country who understood the nature of the fragility of the inter-ethnic relations in the country would call the apparently misguided youths to order.
However, the stridency of the call has ignited a seismic shake in the Nigerian polity. Shockingly, some otherwise highly respected Nigerians from the North and different groups have joined in the self-serving chorus. While the Northern Governors Forum disclaimed the call, saying it was not representative of the position of the North, some other groups have openly backed it. For instance, the Northern Elders' Forum (NEF) supported the call, saying that it was representative of the Northern view. The NEF leadership said that the welter of criticisms that had trailed the ultimatum notwithstanding, the Igbo should leave the North in three months, in compliance with the Northern youths' ultimatum.
Last week, in a chat with newsmen in Zaria, Kaduna State, the NEF spokesperson, Professor Ango Abdullahi, claimed that it was hypocritical for the Igbo to continue to live in other parts of the country while agitating for Nigeria to break up. According to him, "I am disappointed in the decision taken by the Northern Governors' Forum disowning and condemning the agitation by these young, agile and progressive youth groups. Let me ask these governors who they are representing. Are they representing spirits, ghost or the people of the North?"
The Kaduna State government's reaction to the calls by the CNYG and the NEF was most timely. The governor of the state, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, had not only disclaimed the call by the youth coalition, but also ordered that they should be ferreted out and arrested. Many explanations have indeed been given to the CNYG's call and the backing it is receiving from otherwise respected persons and groups in the North. The first is that it was made in retaliation following the calls by Nnamdi Kanu of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) who is facing treason charges but was recently released on bail. Kanu and his clique have ceaselessly agitated for an independent Biafran State, a narrative that is vexatious to many people and groups that benefit from the incongruous unitarist federalism that Nigeria has practised since the 1966 coup. Some have also suggested that the call on the Igbo to quit the North could be a ploy by some people to cause chaos in the polity and actualise their nefarious agenda.
We commend the Kaduna State government for its prompt and decisive action and also gives kudos to those who have risen above the separatist call of the CNYG. The logic that escapes Professor Abdullahi and others in his boat is that Kanu does not necessarily represent the view of the entire South-East of Nigeria. To single a people out for condemnation and recrimination following the perceived infraction of a few persons is illogical. As things stand, the northern elements behind the latest call may still have to issue more ultimatums to other parts of Nigeria who believe that the lopsidedness of the Nigerian political structure is at the root of the fragile relationships among Nigerians. Yet, the way to permanently shut up the Kanus of this world is to go to the root of the problem: the Nigerian state is fragile and needs restructuring.
While most northern groups keep sticking to the wonky unitarist structure that has dragged the country down in all spheres, those who know that it is the bane of the Nigerian existence have always kicked against it. No matter the number and frequency of arrests made of those who ask for the restructuring of the pseudo-federation and those who, when this call is not heeded, take up individual gauntlets to affront the polity, the problem is still there and can only worsen. Unless the country goes to the root of its problems, it is only toying with fire.
It must be said that even though fissiparous tendencies have always existed in Nigeria, they have been further ignited now because there is a general perception that the present government is not fostering a sense of national belonging in terms of the spread of appointments across the geopolitical zones. To worsen matters, the parlous economy causes people to blame their hunger on ethnic disequilibrium. Those who chase shadows by issuing quit notices to fellow nationals from their region should lend their voices to the call on the government to restructure the country.
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Southern leaders demand Arewa youths to withdraw ultimatum.
Bola Badmus - Lagos
LEADERS of South-West, South-East and South-South on Sunday strongly called on Arewa youths and their sponsors to withdraw the quit notice given to the people of the South-East as failure to do so will be taken as an ultimatum given to the entire Southern Nigerians to quit their region.
The prominent leaders, who comprised pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo; former Chief of Staff, Ebitu Ukiwe; Albert Horsfall, Jor Irukwu, former Minister of Information, Walter Ofonagoro; Senator Femi Okunronmu, Senator Bassey Henshaw, among others, declared that any attack against anybody from the South would be considered an attack against the Southern Nigeria.
This was just as the leaders reaffirmed their stand on restructuring of the country, demanding that the Federal Government must come out with concrete steps on the implementation of 2014 National Conference Report before October 1, 2017.
The leaders said this in a communique read by Mr Yinka Odumakin at the end of their meeting, which took place at the Lekki residence of Chief Adebanjo, just as they enjoined the Federal Government to seriously live up to the primary responsibility of any government which was to protect the lives and property of every citizen of Nigeria wherever they might reside.
The communique was signed by Chief Adebanjo for South-West, Albert Horsefall for South-South and former Chief of General Staff, Commodore Ebitu Ikiwe (rtd) for South-East.
“We also demand that Arewa youths and their sponsors must withdraw the quit notice given to the people of the South-East as failure to do so, will be taken as an ultimatum given to the entire Southern Nigeria to quit their region and any attack against anybody from the South, will be considered an attack against the Southern Nigeria.
“We, therefore, advise the Federal Government to take seriously and live up to the primary responsibility of any government which is to protect the lives and property of every citizen of Nigeria wherever they may reside,” the southern leaders said.
The leaders said they decided to come together to forge a common and formidable front against the backdrop of the ultimatum given by the Arewa youths to the people of South-East and by extension to all southerners to vacate the North by October 1, 2017 and the refusal of the Nigerian state to activate the law against any of them.
The communique said such refusal by the authorities gave the impression that these youths were not acting on their own, but with the backing of their establishment.
The communique said: “We consider the need to avert the impending danger arising from the ultimatum given by the Arewa youths.
“We agree that there is a growing demand by our people and other Nigerians to form a stronger federation in which principles and practice of true federalism are upheld.
“We observe that the cry for self-determination will continue unabated and become much more stringent unless the Federal Government sincerely address the issues of restructuring of Nigeria.
“We, therefore, resolve that we reject the attempt to reduce the current crisis in Nigeria flowing from the unresolved nationality question to an Igbo and North affair.”
The leaders, while noting the intervention on the part of the Federal Government, insisted that any further discussion on this crisis should be between the entire South and the North of Nigeria, adding, “The South-East is advised to consider any further meeting where the South-West and South-South are not involved as not of southern Nigeria because the issues involved affects all of us.
“The meeting also condemned in strongest terms the activities of Fulani herdsmen, who have taken over the entire Southern Nigeria and Middle Belt of Nigeria, including invading State House of Assemblies preventing them from making laws, cows going to classrooms and chasing our children out of schools, killing our farmers on their farms and raping their wives.
“Now, we also resolved on the need for the restructuring of Nigeria and to uphold the principles of true federalism as agreed by the founding fathers of Nigeria and practiced effectively in the years before the first military coup in Nigeria.
“We reaffirm our stand on the true federalism is the system of government founded on the democratic principles and institution in which the power to govern is shared between the national and the federating units. Such units have control over their own affairs and bequeathed equal status with their constitution which is consistent with the federal constitution.
“We affirm and resolve in the implementation of the report of the 2014 National Conference aimed at complete transformation and restructuring of our country and to build and confederate Nigeria unity through peaceful and harmonious unity, progress and genuine development.
“We want concrete steps taken on the implementation of 2014 National Conference Report before 1st October 2017.
“We resolve to reawaken once more the spirit of friendship and mutual respect among our people and extol our common determination to pursue peace, progress and enhance the continued existence of Nigeria just as we commend the convener of this dialogue in bringing us together. We appeal to them to continue to do so in future.
Also in attendance at the meeting were: Dr. Okey Anueyiaya, Chief Sydney Dike, Chief Eric Ebeh, Senator Bucknor Akerele, Ogita Iyalla-Finnih, Dr Kunle Olajide, Chief Mike Uwaka, Abdulaziz Ude, Chief Goddy Uwazurike, Prof George Obiozor, Charles Odunukwe, Iyaze Ebigwe, Col. Tony Iyiam, Dr. Amos Akingba, Supo Shonibare, Chief Tokunbo Ajasin, Air Comodore Idongest Nkanga (rtd), Chief Guy Ikokwu, among others.
Copyright © 2017 | Tribune Online
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Igbo quit notice: Pan Yoruba group calls for Oodua Republic
By Olasunkanmni Akoni
~Vanguard Nigeria. Monday, June 12, 2017.
A Pan Yoruba group, O'odua Nationalist Coalition, (ONAC) has called on Yoruba people to prepare for their own sovereign nation, "Oodua" Republic, following the lingering agitation for the breakup of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
It will be recalled that a Coalition of Northern Youth Groups, last Tuesday, at a press conference, warned the Igbo to leave the North within three months.
In response to the warning, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPoB), one of the groups spearheading the agitation for the separation of the South-East from Nigeria, has asked Igbo and other southerners resident in the North to start packing to leave the region
A statement issued by a Yoruba group at the weekend and signed by Oluwole Suleimann, Michael Popoola, and Mrs. Aduke Fadahunsi, and made available to Vanguard, stressed the need for the creation of Yoruba sovereign nation, Oduduwa Republic.
The group stressed that it became necessary in the face of the lingering problems and conflict built around the national question that has stunted the growth of Nigeria for over a century.
"This conflict has again reared its head, 50 years after a civil war that inflicted pain and misery on the Yoruba people apart from distorting the development plan of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo for the South West," the group stated.
ONAC is made up of 18 Pan Yoruba groups including the Oodua Peoples Congress, (OPC), Oodua Liberation Movement, (OLM), Oodua Republic Coalition, (ORC), Yoruba Revolutionary Congress, (YORC), Oodua Muslim-Christian Dialogue Group , (OMDG), Yoruba Students Nationalist Front, (YOSNF), Oodua Hunters Union, (OHUN) and 11 other groups.
The group also called on Yoruba people in the territories of the Hausa-Fulani North to be guided by a strong sense of history and the fact that they would not be spared by those who claim to be their hosts. "We advise them to begin to make alternative plans for the inevitable upheaval being promoted by the Fulani oligarchy.
"The North has always been the aggressor because of the region's loss of power and the unhidden desire to make Nigeria the irreversible extension of the Fulani emirate.
"What we see is violent conflict of civilisations which can only be resolved when each region go her own way. In the bid to keep Nigeria as one country, millions of people have been killed and the lives of children wasted, the future pauperized and the potentials of Yoruba young men and women bottled or chained with fetters of iron.
"Today, we make the historic declaration that Yoruba people are ready for our own Oduduwa Republic. We have watched events these past days. The cloud is getting thicker. The poisonous rain appear ready to fall. It is time for the Yoruba people to be ready to defend our homeland from being seized by local imperial elements and their collaborators. We assert Yoruba self-determination and sovereignty. We shall work for it. We will actualize it," ONAC said.
The groups said the Yoruba people have suffered unprecedented hardship in the form of human and material destruction since 1960 when the country attained independence.
"Our leaders beginning from Chief Obafemi Awolowo were jailed on trumped up charges. 28 leaders of Yoruba were imprisoned unjustly. Chief M.K.O Abiola was murdered. The industrial bases built by Awolowo were destroyed by the military rookies appointed to control the South West region, our culture destroyed and the future of our young people put asunder. Today, many Yoruba people have become scavengers across the world fleeing from a hostile, bloodletting and malicious country that hold no promise of good and abundant life for the long suffering and exhausted population.
The group stated further "We call on Yoruba people all over the world to prepare for a sovereign nation for the people of the South West. We are over 50 million and far more than the population of 140 countries in the world. Yoruba will be the third biggest nation in Africa and about the 28th biggest nation in the world. We are big and knowledgeable enough to be a sovereign nation. We assert the Yoruba self-determination without any further delay."
ONAC maintained that the position of Northern youths asking Igbo to quit the North, the outright demand for Arewa sovereignty by the Northern Elders Forum, (NEF), and the legitimate demand for Biafra by Igbo, the call for a Niger-Delta Republic; "It is time for the Yoruba people to stand for Oodua Republic without any further delay. Yoruba people this time will not support any attack on Self determination. We shall mobilise the masses and prevent Yoruba people from being used for any attack on the long suffering indigenous peoples of the South East and the South- South"
ONAC said the quit notice issued by the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, (AYCF) and the Northern Elders Forum, (NEF) was not against the Igbo alone but also against the Yoruba since Igbo is not written on the forehead of residents in the North.
ONAC concluded: "This is not the first time we have called for Oodua Republic. In April 2015, we organized a massive rally demanding for Oodua Republic. But today, this demand has become even more crucial than any other thing."
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PRESS RELEASE BY THE MIDDLE BELT YOUTH COUNCIL.
DATE: 7TH JUNE, 2017
We wish to express our profound gratitude to God for keeping us alive today. Middle Belt Youth Council is extremely concerned about the ongoing regional tension in Nigeria today and we want to make our position clear to the world. In the light of incessant threats to one Nigeria posed by killer-herdsmen, we want to call on good people of Middle Belt to first of all, support the Anti-grazing Bill. Grazing by Fulani herdsmen on our land has become the major cause of conflicts in our region therefore, we're calling for total ban on open grazing so as to save the lives of our people and their farmlands.
Secondly, it's no longer news that our country Nigeria is facing a daunting challenge of peace and unity but we want to assure the good citizens of Nigeria that we have been a peace-loving people and we'll continue to be. But, in an event one part of the country decides to go away as a separate entity, Middle Belt is also ready to make an independent statement. We want to clarify those who think that the Middle Belt is part of the North: God created everywhere and everyone and He gave it to whom He chooses and Middle Belt is a creation of God and not man (Usman bn Fodio). Therefore, we choose what to use our land for, how to run it and where we want to be. Middle Belt has been a home for the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, South-South and the South-West without any form of discrimination against anyone. We've accommodated every Nigerian for centuries now. We deserve respect and commendations. If the Arewa youths are sending away Igbos from their states, we in the Middle Belt are ready to offer them accommodation in our land (which is an inheritance from God and nobody will take it away from us) for them to continue with their life and businesses.
Southern Nigeria people should also know that 'Middle Belters' are not northerners and we can never be because we're not affiliated in terms of culture, language, education, economy, and general lifestyle. The Biafran struggle did not come as an accident but as a result of injustice and unfair treatment to regions, people or religion. Over the years, our federalism has been a fat lie that deprives political rights and freedom of some sections of the country while others benefit immensely from it. Middle Belt has been at the receiving end of this inequitable arrangement in which our people in Southern Kaduna, Southern Bauchi, Southern Borno, Southern Kebbi, Adamawa are under constant alienation and annihilation. Therefore, Middle Belt strongly stands for reconstruction of Nigeria not only restructuring.
We'll join hands with Southern Nigerian people to actualize it. In view of this press statement, we want to urge Middle Belters to remain resolute in making sure we protect our future against the claims by the Hausa/Fulani. More so, for want of peace and unity of dear country Nigeria, we call on Igbo nation to feel at home in the Middle Belt in an event they are sent away from the Arewa land.
God bless Nigeria! God bless the Middle Belt.
Signed: President, Emma Zopmal
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The Igbos Have Paid For Their Sins- Emir Sanusi

Emir Sanusi has led his voice to the ongoing controversy rising from the Kaduna declaration on the Igbos in the North
In a statement made available to Post-Nigeria, on Saturday, Sanusi went down memory lane, on how the Igbos carried out the first Military coup, that led to the death of top Northerners in the early 60s.
The statement reads:
The Igbo people of Nigeria have made a mark in the history of this nation. They led the first successful military coup which eliminated the Military and Political leaders of other regions while letting off Igbo leaders. Nwafor Orizu, then Senate President, in consultation with President Azikiwe, subverted the constitution and handed over power to Aguiyi-Ironsi.
Subsequent developments, including attempts at humiliating other peoples, led to the counter-coup and later the civil war. The Igbos themselves must acknowledge that they have a large part of the blame for shattering the unity of this country.
Having said that, this nation must realise that Igbos have more than paid for their foolishness. They have been defeated in war, rendered paupers by monetary policy fiat, their properties declared abandoned and confiscated, kept out of strategic public sector appointments and deprived of public services. The rest of the country forced them to remain in Nigeria and has continued to deny them equity.
The Northern Bourgeoisie and the Yoruba Bourgeoisie have conspired to keep the Igbo out of the scheme of things. In the recent transition when the Igbo solidly supported the PDP in the hope of an Ekwueme presidency, the North and South- West treated this as a Biafra agenda. Every rule set for the primaries, every gentleman´s agreement was set aside to ensure that Obasanjo, not Ekwueme emerged as the candidate. Things went as far as getting the Federal Government to hurriedly gazette a pardon. Now, with this government, the marginalistion of the Igbo is more complete than ever before. The Igbos have taken all these quietly because, they reason, they brought it upon themselves. But the nation is sitting on a time-bomb.
After the First World War, the victors treated Germany with the same contempt Nigeria is treating Igbos. Two decades later, there was a Second World War, far costlier than the first.
Germany was again defeated, but this time, they won a more honourable peace. Our present political leaders have no sense of History. There is a new Igbo man, who was not born in 1966 and neither knows nor cares about Nzeogwu and Ojukwu.
There are Igbo men on the street who were never Biafrans. They were born Nigerians, are Nigerians, but suffer because of actions of earlier generations. They will soon decide that it is better to fight their own war, and may be find an honourable peace, than to remain in this contemptible state in perpetuity.
The Northern Bourgeoisie and the Yoruba Bourgeoisie have exacted their pound of flesh from the Igbos. For one Sardauna, one Tafawa Balewa, one Akintola and one Okotie- Eboh, hundreds of thousands have died and suffered.
If this issue is not addressed immediately, no conference will solve Nigeria´s problems.
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THE YOUTHS OF ODUDUWA REPUBLIC LAGOS DECLARATION – 10TH JUNE 2017
In view of recent events in the political space called Nigeria, we, the youths of Oduduwa republic occupying the geographical space called South West of Nigeria hereby categorically state without any reservation that we are sick and tired of the generational threats of the Igbo extraction of this forced union, to go their separate ways in what they call Biafra.
In this threat we were born, in this threat we’ve lived our lives and if care is not taken, in this same threat our children will grow up and give birth to their own children. It is unfortunate that our fathers do not realize the enormous damage they do to our personalities and confidence by keeping quiet all these years making us look like the Igbos are doing us a favour by cohabiting with us, occupying our space, enjoying our resources and even to the point of dominating our political arena.
OUR GENERATION MUST END THIS NONSENSE.
Without wasting time in going to the details of the issues, as the whole world knows too well where we are coming from, where we are and where we are likely to end up, we wish to make it abundantly clear that we shall no longer tolerate the madness of the Igbo region intimidating, harassing and defrauding the Yoruba nation with their empty calls for Biafra.
As from today, the 7th day of June 2017, any mention of Biafra again on our soil will automatically, without recourse to any other warning, earn the Igbos an eviction notice from all of the six states that form ODUDUWA REPUBLIC namely, for the avoidance of doubts, Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ondo and Ekiti.
We shall within three months of such act of agitation for Biafra do everything possible to chase the Igbos out of our land so we all can leave in peace and regain our dignity as human race. If you are my wife or my husband and every morning you wake up, you threaten to divorce me, one day, no matter how gentle and loving I am, I will get tired of your threats and accept your proposal, that exactly is the stage we are now. But note that you cannot divorce me and still insist you want to live in my house or keep occupying my space.
You cannot divorce me and still insist on sleeping with me forever, it cannot just work. You divorce me, you go your way and allow somebody else who values me, who will not be abusing and cursing me everyday of my life to move in and occupy the space. It’s just common sense. It should be noted that we are not by this declaration asking the Igbos to leave our space, however, the choice is theirs.
If you want to live within the ODUDUWA REPUBLIC, you must henceforth shut up, shut down your agitation for Biafra, respect us as a people, your loving and accommodating hosts and choose to live in peace with us, otherwise, any three months from the time you carry out any Biafra activity again, we will make sure you vacate our land.
The fact that our fathers have tolerated this nonsense for ages does not make all of us stupid, Oduduwa lineage is never a cowardly race, we only don’t react intuitively, even the Igbo race should know by now that everyone has been pushed to the wall and if you think this is an empty threat, we dare you to dare us.
We are using this medium also to call on all Nigerian citizens of Yoruba extraction living, working or sojourning in any part of the Southern region of the Nigeria to, as a matter of urgency, begin to make a relocation plan.
Home is home, nowhere else is better than home. Please do not allow this time bomb to catch you unawares.
Most of the people parading themselves as Yoruba leaders will not take any proactive steps now because their children and family members are not in any of those areas, they are rather scattered all over the US and Europe so be careful in listening to their assurances of nothing will happen. Your destiny is in your hands, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere else but your life first.
In conclusion, we call on all political, social and religious leaders in Nigeria to prevail on the Igbos to either stop talking about Biafra or immediately begin to relocate to their country as we will not be held responsible for the consequences of their action or inaction henceforth. This declaration goes for any tribe, region or group of people that cannot stand our gut on our soil.
A word is enough for the wise...
Long Live Oduduwa Republic
ODUDUWA A GBE WA O.
Signed
The Secretary General
THE YOUTHS OF ODUDUWA REPUBLIC
(YOR)
• Relatives in S' East to return home
• Seek global observers to witness dissolution of Nigeria
• MASSOB accepts quit notice, Afenifere warns
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| President, Northern Emancipation Network, Abdul-azzez Suleima (left); President, Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Shettima Yerima and North Central Coordinator, Arewa Citizens Action for Change, Mohammed Eneji Abdulhamid, at the presentation of a joint paper on the Igbo's persistence for secession in Kaduna |
Sixteen northern youth groups rose from a joint meeting in Kaduna yesterday to give Igbo residing in
their states up to October 1, 2017 to vacate the region. This came days after the shutting down of major towns in the South East on May 30, 2017 as part of the campaign by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) for the actualisation of Biafra Republic.
The action of the northern youths shows that the agitations for self-determination are spiraling out of control. The nation's leaders need to immediately intervene to stop these agitations from resulting in violence that may consume the entire nation.
The youth organisations in attendance at the Kaduna meeting included Arewa Citizens Action for Change, Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Arewa Youth Development Foundation, Arewa Students Forum and Northern Emancipation Network on the Igbo Persistence for Secession.
Mallam Abdulazeez Suleiman who read the statement issued on behalf of others at the Arewa House in Kaduna, said the North was tired of the political marriage existing in the country, hence the need for restructuring as being canvassed by many notable Nigerian leaders, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
"The persistence for the actualisation of Biafra by the unruly Igbo of South-Eastern Nigeria has lately assumed another alarming twist which involved the forceful (sic) lockdown of activities and denial of other people right to free movement in the South-East by the rebel IPOB and its overt and covert sponsors.
"This latest action and similar confrontational conducts which amount to a brutal encroachment on the rights of those termed as non-indigenous people residing and doing lawful businesses in those areas illegally demarcated and defined as Biafra by the Igbo, are downright unacceptable and shall no longer be tolerated," the northern youths said.
Alleging persistent Igbo threat to national integration, the northern youth said they had met with several other people in their region and reviewed the current position of the North and jointly came up with the declaration.
The statement further reads: "The Igbo people of the South-East, without remorse for the carnage they wrought on the nation in the 1960s, are today boldly reliving those sinister intentions connoted by the Biafran agitation that led to the very first bloody insurrection in Nigeria's history.
"Emboldened by the apparent indifference of the Nigerian authorities, the Igbo secessionist tendency is widening in scope and action at every stage, with adverse effects on the law-abiding people of other regions residing in or passing through the East, while the Igbo leaders and elders by their utterances and direct action or inaction appear to support and encourage it.
"This is happening irrespective of the undisputable fact that Igbo have done and are doing more damage to our collective nationhood than any other ethnic group; being responsible for the first violent interference with democracy in Nigeria resulting in a prolonged counter-productive chain of military dictatorship.
"It is on record that since the inception of the current democratic dispensation, the Igbo have shown and maintained open contempt and resentment for the collective decision expressed by majority of Nigerians at various stages via generally acceptable democratic processes.
"While these provocative acts of aggression persist and grow in dimension with each new move, leaders of the North whose people are at the receiving end of the threats, appear helplessly unperturbed.
"Without pursuing a resolute action-plan, these northern leaders have adopted and have been dragging their people into a pitifully pacifist position in order to sustain an elusive national cohesion that has long been ridiculed by the Igbo.
"From today, June 6, 2017, when this proclamation is signed, the North, a critical player in the Nigerian project, hereby declares that it will no longer be disposed to coexisting with the Igbo and shall take definite steps to end the partnership by pulling out of the current federal arrangement.
"This conclusion is necessitated by the realisation that it since (sic) ceased to be comfortable or safe to continue sharing the same country with the ungrateful, uncultured Igbo who have exhibited reckless disrespect for the other federating units and stained the integrity of the entire nation with their insatiable criminal obsessions.
"Rather than certain sections holding the whole country to ransom at every stage, each should be allowed to go its own way as we categorically proclaim today that the North is fed up with being in the same country with this pack of acrimonious Igbo partners.
"The North hereby openly calls on the authorities and other national and international stakeholders to acknowledge this declaration by taking steps to facilitate the final dissolution of this hopeless union that has never been convenient to any of the parties.
"As a first step, since the Igbo have clearly abused the unreciprocated hospitality that gave them unrestricted access to, and ownership of landed properties all over the North, our first major move shall be to reclaim, assume and assert sole ownership and control of these landed resources currently owned, rented or in any way enjoyed by the ingrate Igbo in any part of Northern Nigeria.
"Consequently, officials of the signatory groups to this declaration are already mandated to commence immediate inventory of all properties, spaces or activity in the north currently occupied by the Igbo for forfeiture at the expiration of the ultimatum contained in this declaration.
"With the effective date of this declaration, which is today, Tuesday, June 06, 2017, all Igbo currently residing in any part of Northern Nigeria are hereby served notice to relocate within three months and all northerners residing in the East are advised likewise."
The groups mandated all northern civil society and pressure groups to mobilise for sustained and coordinated campaigns at their respective State Government Houses, Houses of Assembly, Local Government Council Secretariats and traditional palaces for steps to be taken to ensure the enforcement of the 2directives .
"We are hereby placing the Nigerian authorities and the entire nation on notice that as from the 1st October 2017, we shall commence the implementation of visible actions to prove to the whole world that we are no longer part of any federal union that should do with the Igbo.
"From that date, effective, peaceful and safe mop-up of all the remnants of the stubborn Igbo that neglect to heed this quit notice shall commence to finally eject them from every part of the North.
"And finally, all authorities, individuals or groups are hereby advised against attempting to undermine this declaration by insisting on this union with the Igbo who have thus far proved to be an unnecessary baggage carried too far and for too long."
In its reaction, the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) said it received with gladness the "quit notice" and urged the Igbo to return home immediately.
MASSOB, in a statement by its leader Uchenna Madu said: "The latest quit notice by the coalition of northern youths under the umbrella of Arewa youths is not a surprise gift to Biafrans residing in Arewa land. MASSOB is aware that such rascality will happen. As a matter of fact, this is the only rascality exhibited by sponsored Arewa youths to forcefully (sic) exit the people of Biafra residing in Arewa land that MASSOB will hundred percent support. Their Boko Haram tactics didn't work as planned.
"MASSOB gladly received the good news of quit notice order to the people of Biafra living in Arewa land. We pledge our total support towards this divinely approved quit notice. MASSOB congratulates the Arewa political, religious, and traditional and opinion leaders who sponsored their youths wing by using Arewa House in Kaduna for this greatest meeting of a coalition of Islamic fundamentalists.
"MASSOB is hereby advising the people of Biafra mostly the Igbo living in Northern Nigeria (Arewa land) to take this quit notice serious (sic) as the plan to violently kill your children, wives and demolish your investments are already perfected. MASSOB will never fight or defend your lives and properties in Hausa Fulani land. The consciousness and realities of Biafra is highly overwhelming now."
Igbo youths under the aegis of Ohanaeze Youth Council (OYC), said the statement was capable of causing chaos in the country but urged the Igbo to remain "wherever they are and defend themselves if pushed to the wall."
One of the leaders of the Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo said the development was a bad signal for the country. Adebanjo called on the northerner leaders to urgently condemn the statement by the northerner youths by saying that they did not speak for the north. He also urged the Federal Government to make a statement on the issue "otherwise it has far-reaching implications to the unity of the nation. Otherwise nobody is afraid of separation. If the North wants to break, there is nothing wrong but the idea of giving ultimatum to a particularly set of people to vacate their region is unacceptable."
Earlier yesterday, Prof. Ben Nwabueze described the leader of IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, as a great Igbo man, stressing that marginalisation has robbed the Igbo of greatness.
Nwabueze, who spoke in Enugu when Kanu led the leadership of the Eastern Consultative Assembly (ECA) to his office, said that those undermining the agitation for secession were making a huge mistake.
"We are supposed to be one of the leading ethnic groups in Nigeria but today we are in the minority; we have been so marginalised. Nnamdi Kanu's case teaches that repression is seldom the right response to complaints and agitations for amelioration in the conditions of things in the society. Repression seldom settles grievances. If anything, it forces them underground.
"Another lesson to learn from Kanu's case is that this self-determination should be a graduated process. It should begin with regional autonomy. The country should be restructured into six more or less self-governing zones or regions, with the powers of the central government drastically reduced, so as to minimise the fierce contest for its control," the constitutional lawyer said.
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Arewa Youths Write Osinbajo
June, 19th 2017
His Excellency,
Professor Yemi Osinbajo,
Acting President,
Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Aso Rock Presidential Villa
Abuja
OPEN LETTER
Your Excellency,
APPRECIATION
On behalf of this coalition and all the peace-loving people of Northern Nigeria, we begin this letter by commending your efforts towards finding a lasting solution to the lingering Igbo-induced crisis that is undoubtedly overheating the polity.
We sincerely believe Your Excellency's good intentions as shown by your prompt and genuine actions towards ensuring peace and stability in holding talks with leaders of the North and the South-East.
Though we do not doubt Your Excellency's bona fide concerns for the peaceful resolution of the crises, we nevertheless have reservations as to the efficacy of this approach in ensuring lasting solutions.
Our doubts are informed by the following historical antecedents that have characterized the behavior and conduct of the Igbo in Nigeria and previous efforts at containing them.
PAST EXPERIENCES
1. The Igbo of Eastern Nigeria manifested their hatred for Nigeria's unity barely five years after we gained our independence from the British when on January 15, 1966, their army officers carried out the first-ever mutiny that marked the beginning of a series of crisis which has profoundly altered the course of Nigeria's history.
2. By that ill motivated, cowardly and deliberate action, the Igbo killed many northern officers from the rank of lieutenant colonel upwards and also decapitated the Prime Minister and the political leadership of the Northern and Western regions but left the zenith of Igbo leadership at the Federal level and the Eastern region intact.
3. In line with the Igbo plan, General Aguiyi-Ironsi took advantage of the vacuum and, instead of returning power to the remnants of the First Republic government, he appropriated the coup and attempted to consolidate it for his people.
4. Army officers of the Northern Region were eventually compelled to execute a counter coup on July 29, 1966 following a coordinated series of brazen provocations from the Igbo who taunted northerners on northern streets by mocking the way leaders of the region were slain by the Igbo. This unfortunately resulted in mob action which resulted in the death of many Igbos.
5. And when Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, from the North took over as Head of State following the counter coup, the Igbo through Lt. Col. Ojukwu, characteristically refused to recognize Gowon.
5. Ojukwu declared the secession of the Igbo people from Nigeria and the formation of the republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967 resulting in a civil war that led to the tragic deaths of more than 2 million Nigerians.
6. It is important to note here that the Igbo eventually capitulated and conceded defeat in an unconditional surrender, not an armistice, on January 15, 1970 which renders any talk about Biafra at any other time, a repudiation of the terms of that surrender signed by Phillip Effiong and other Biafran leaders.
BIAFRA REINCARNATED
1. In a shot out of the blues, the Igbo have over the last 2 years regrouped and fiercely and openly started discussing Biafra again under Ralph Uwazuruike of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State Of Biafra MASSOB.
2. This was given greater impetus by a more furious Igbo rogue group called the Indigenous People Of Biafra IPOB under Nnamdi Kanu who even operates an illegal radio station spreading hate and war messages across the nation, calling other ethnic groups all sorts of names and threatening them with violent extermination. (Ref: https://youtu.be/KIaMJU_bdbs,https://youtu.be/ozgQtmZu614 andhttps://youtu.be/MGwoq26nsIk ).
3. The activities of the Igbo under Kanu's IPOB has grown exponentially ranging from ordering people of other regions out of the South East - particularly the Yorubas and Hausa /Fulani from the South West and the North respectively, to open declaration of the amassing of arms and forceful total shutdown of the entire South-East. (Ref: https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.itrend247.com.ng/2016/03/breakingchaos-as-ipobmassob-orders.html%3Fm%3D0&ved=0ahUKEwiW8rvW88TUAhWFLFAKHeVCBm4QFggsMAY&usg=AFQjCNHg9_V3LC2cqHM_Q1Mu7pGl206Jyg&sig2=pZ6tM7DHshyaI4FqoQx79Q
4. KANU and IPOB have declared full allegiance to a "Republic of Biafra" and continue to preach hatred and war virtually every day, and not for once did any Igbo leader call them to order. Instead, many of the leaders including Mr Ike Ekweremadu, the deputy senate president, the most senior elected Igbo, pay Kanu courtesy calls to prove that he is speaking for the entire Igbo. It is glaring to all that Kanu has serially breached all the terms of his stringent jail conditions in total disregard to the sanctity of our justice system .
5. Even the latest statement by the South-East Governors Forum signed by Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State in a response to the Northern reaction, did not condemn Kanu and Uwazuruike but characterised their action as “peaceful”. Ref: https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.informationng.com/2017/06/igbo-quit-notice-press-release-south-east-governors-forum-must-read.html&ved=0ahUKEwiN57n09MTUAhWJZ1AKHW6eAkkQFgglMAI&usg=AFQjCNGENaGoryeq0zs3t8NRCqx0bjG6DA&sig2=n3AD6FKnapYUo16hcAJsCQ
6. While all this is going on, neither the Igbo political and cultural leaders nor other regional leaders of the North or West nor the international community or any religious body ever found it necessary to call these renegade groups to order or in the very least admonish their leaders to do so.
Furthermore, none of the Igbo leaders holding various positions in this government ever disowned IPOB or condemned its operations until lately with Governor Rochas Okorocha's mild condemnation after the Kaduna Declaration by our Coalition .
GROUNDS FOR SUSPICION
Given the unrepentant antecedents exhibited by the Igbo as highlighted above, we strongly believe that the gruesome picture that the Biafran agitation represents is beyond a few people showcasing to Your Excellency that the Igbo will eventually heed the call for peace and desist from their dangerous campaign against Nigeria.
The seed of hate planted in the name of Biafra is evidently so deep that the ongoing interaction between you and the leaders from the South East can not in our well informed opinion douse or address the underlying deep seated underlying problems (Ref http://jaguda.com/2013/08/14/video-chilling-documentary-of-a-war-time-massacre-the-legacy-of-the-asaba-massacres/).
We base our concerns on the following grounds.
1. Despite the fact that the Igbo have been the most accommodated and tolerated of all the ethnic groups of Nigeria, the renewed incessant, spiteful and vile threats and insults on Northern leaders and their people, culture and religions that are the targets of this venomous agitation for Biafra, can hardly be addressed through a series of two hours dialogues.
2. As if to prove this, barely hours after Your Excellency's meeting with the South-East leaders, the Biafran Igbo openly disowned the leaders and dissociated themselves from the meeting. (Ref: https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/06/ipob-to-osinbajo-your-meeting-with-igbo-leaders-without-kanu-unacceptable/&ved=0ahUKEwjHueSn8cTUAhVJI1AKHZmQD6wQFggqMAM&usg=AFQjCNHwiwuEKgcK9l5zQLUzfXyPu1aQ7A&sig2=HbfcbWt6wiZZfiDiXuz6MA
3. More disturbingly, Kanu has openly claimed that the Biafran agitators have amassed arms in readiness for a war of secession which is quite conceivable given the fact that since 2009, catches of dangerous weapons routinely smuggled into the country and occasionally intercepted by the Nigerian authorities , were all traced to Igbo sources.
(Ref: https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://247ureports.com/2014/05/25/boko-haram-three-suspected-arms-suppliers-arrested-in-enugu/&ved=0ahUKEwjVoNef8sTUAhUEYlAKHRRsB58QFghHMAg&usg=AFQjCNHlUhTYo4s8B0kQNz-0jeHR34MTDA&sig2=EEM5w7RzNKyGFvHnmjmBkA
4. The situation continues to be baffling and alarming and therefore unacceptable - especially with the Igbo political and opinion leaders openly legitimizing the violent comments, insults, threats, hate speeches and call to anarchy that the Biafrans led by Nnamdi Kanu are making against the North and the Nigerian state in general.
5. South-East leaders have instead, enthusiatically given Kanu the platform, patronage and symbolic legitimacy through an ignominious display of homage, reception and open embrace.
OUR CONCERNS
1. Concerned by the fact that the Biafrans have confessed to arming themselves for a violent breakup, we feel that it is risky for the rest of the country particularly the North to go on pretending that it is safe for us to co habitate with the Igbos given how deeply they are entrenched in our societies .
2. And since evidently the Igbo have not been sufficiently humbled by their self imposed bloody civil violence of 1966, we are strongly concerned that nothing short of granting their Biafran dream will suffice.
3. And since the Igbo have virtually infiltrated every nook and cranny of Northern Nigeria where they have been received with open arms
as fellow compatriots, we strongly believe that the region is no longer safe and secure in the light of the unfolding threats and the fact that for a long time, the Igbo have gone to extra ordinary lengths to ensure that in their domain in the South East, Northerners and Westerners are as much as possible disenfranchised from owning any businesses whereas in Kano alone, they own not less than 100, 000 shops across all the business districts.
4. That since the younger generation of Nigerians makes up for more than 60 percent of the nation's population, it is our hope that they inherit this country in better shape so that they can build a much better future for themselves and their offsprings in an atmosphere that is devoid of anarchy, hate, suspicion and negativity that characterize the polarized, and clearly irreconcilable differences forced on us by the Biafran Igbos.
5. To make a bad situation even worse, their leaders have continued to show support for this treacherous cause and thus giving credence to our concern that what they say against us is what they truly mean and intend - “Kill everyone in the Zoo” (North). Your Excellency, we cannot afford to discard this as mere mischief as the utterances that caused the terrible Rwandan genocide still resonates in our minds.
6. Lastly Sir, it is quite impossible to expect that other nationalities would simply stand by and watch while a certain ethnic group perpetrates all the above heinous misconducts that involve threats, call to violence and extermination, insults and songs of war without responding.
OUR STAND
While we unequivocally restate that we are not waging war or calling anyone to violence, we nevertheless are also not willing to continue tolerating the malicious campaign and threats of war that the Igbos have continued to wage against us.
Neither can we afford to continue giving the keys to our cities to a people whose utterances, plans and arrangements are clearly geared towards war and anarchy.
We therefore demand that the only enduring solution to this scourge that is being visited on the nation is complete separation of the states presently agitating for Biafra from the Federal Republic of Nigeria through a peaceful political process by:
1. Taking steps to facilitate the actualization of the Biafran nation in line with the principle of self-determination as an integral part of contemporary customary international law.
2. The principle of self-determination has, since world war II become a part of the United Nations Charter which states in Article 1(2), that one of the purposes of the UN is “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.
3. We submit that this protocol envisages that people of any nation have the right to self-determination, and although the Charter did not categorically impose direct legal obligations on member States; it implies that member States allow agitating or minority groups to self-govern as much as possible.
4. This principle of self-determination has since been espoused in two additional treaties: The United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 1 of both international documents promote and protect the right of a people to self-determination. State parties to these international documents are obliged to uphold the primacy and realization of this right as it cements the international legal philosophy that gives a people the right to self-determination.
4. As the Igbo agitations persist and assume threatening dimensions, we submit that there is need to ensure that they are given the opportunity to exercise the right to self-determination as entrenched under the aforementioned international statutes to which Nigeria is a signatory.
PRAYERS:
1. Aware that the right of self-determination in international law is the legal right for a “people” that allows them to attain a certain degree of autonomy from a sovereign state through a legitimate political process, we strongly demand for a referendum to take place in a politically sane atmosphere where all parties will have a democratic voice over their future and the future of the nation.
2. The Igbo from all over the country and in the Diaspora should be advised to converge in their region in the South-East for a plesbisite to be organized and conducted by the United Nations and other regional bodies for them to categorically to decide between remaining part of Nigeria or having their separate country.
3. That government should at the end of the plesbite implement whatever is agreed and resolved in order to finally put this matter to rest.
4. Lastly, we pray His Excellency to study the references forwarded with this letter dispassionately and decide who is more in the wrong between those who openly pledge allegiance to a country other than Nigeria backing it up with persistent threats of war and those of us whose allegiance remains with the Nigerian state but simply urge that the secessionists be allowed to actualize their dream peacefully throw universally entrenched democratic options.
CONCLUSION
Your Excellency, we want to reiterate our high respect for your office and acknowledge the efforts you are making to lower tensions. We assure you, as well-brought up northerners, we listen to the advise and cautions of our elders, and in particular, their concerns that we do not create the impression that any Igbo or any Nigerian will be harmed in the North. We assure you that we will defend the rights of every Nigerian to live in peace and have their rights protected.
While we do not see this clamour for Biafra as an issue over which a single drop of blood should be shed, we at the same time, insist that the Igbo be allowed to have their Biafra and for them to vacate our land peacefully so that our dear country Nigeria could finally enjoy lasting peace and stability.
Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
SIGNED:
Amb. ShettimaYerima
Joshua Viashman
Aminu Adam
Abdul-Azeez Suleiman
Nastura Ashir Sharif
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Presidency replies Arewa youths letter to Osinbajo on Biafra secession
From: Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, AbujaPresidency replies Arewa youths letter to Osinbajo on Biafra secession
~The SUN Nigeria. Monday, June 19, 2017.
The Presidency has reacted to Arewa youths' letter to Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, urging him to allow agitation for Biafra to succeed through peaceful means.According to the Presidency, the ongoing consultations with leaders of thoughts and traditional rulers from the North and South-eastern regions of the country, following the escalation of ethnic tensions occasioned by the agitation for Biafra and the vacation order issued by Northern youths for Igbo to quit the North, was the best way to approach the issue.
A top Presidential source, who pleaded not to be named, told Daily Sun that, “our response is the ongoing consultations Mr. Acting President is engaged in with leaders of thoughts from both regions. It is the best way to get everyone to see reason. The Presidency doesn’t want to escalate the matter by responding to individual groups. The ongoing parley is the best approach.”
The coalition of northern youth groups that recently gave all Igbo persons resident in the North three months ultimatum to vacate the region had, in a letter on Monday urged Osinbajo to take allow agitation for Biafra to succeed through peaceful means.
The group, in an open letter to the acting president, urges him to take “steps to facilitate the actualisation of the agitation in line with the principle of self-determination as an integral part of contemporary customary international law”.
The coalition, while commending Osinbajo for initiating series of discussions with leaders from the north and south east, however, said going by recent events, the talks would not yield any positive results.
The letter, which was signed by five leaders of the group insisted that principle of self-determination has, since world war II become a part of the United Nations Charter which states in Article 1(2), that one of the purposes of the UN is "to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”.
” We submit that this protocol envisages that people of any nation have the right to self-determination, and although the Charter did not categorically impose direct legal obligations on member States; it implies that member States allow agitating or minority groups to self-govern as much as possible,” they said.
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Reactions:
It is shocking to see the extent people can go to achieve selfish aims. The North is now self-destructing. The President is sick and his Vice is acting. This has nothing to do with the Igbos. Trying to destabilize the country out of fear that constitutional processes could result in the South West taking over the presidency is very unwise.
Much more unwise is picking on the Igbos as a tool to achieve the destabilization plot. People should read between the lines and understand what is going on.
Once more the problem is between the core North and the Southwest and again attempt is being made to use Igbo as scapegoat. The North should be more innovative and think out how to pull themselves out of the hole they have fallen as they are fast losing old friends and alliances.
The Igbos sympathize with them but will not support lawlessness and irresponsible behaviour.
We expect the core North to use their brain instead of foolishly trying to destabilise Nigeria.
If that happens they will be the greatest losers.
Igbos should talk less and avoid responding to every reckless behaviour. The plan seems to be aimed at provoking the Igbos and using Igbo reaction as a ploy to scuttle constitutional democracy. Many of the people making reckless and hate comments now, will at the fullness of time be ashamed of themselves.
Again, I repeat, nothing concerns the Igbos in this palaver. The core North and the Southwest should sort themselves out. Igbos have learnt from history and will no longer be conned. This is my most humble submission.
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Igbo youths to Northern group: We're not afraid of war
~Vanguard Nigeria. Wednesday, June 7, 2017.
An Eastern group, Igbo Youth Movement, IYM, has said that Ndigbo are not afraid of war, which is a reply it has given to an eviction threat by a northern youth group ordering all Igbos to leave the north in three months or face physical attacks.
A statement allegedly issued by the Eastern groups founder, Evang. Elliot Ugochukwu-Uko, it described the eviction order by the Coalition of Northern Youths, CNY, as "childish," stressing that people of the South East are not afraid of war.
Evangelis Ugochukwu noted that rather than issue such threat, the group should write to the National Assembly and other world body to "urgently" conduct referendum so as to secure the future of the country.
"The statement from a hitherto unknown northern group is primed to deliver a message to the whole world that some people prefer bloodshed to peaceful restructuring of Nigeria.
"The non-existent group merely represents an attempt by the sectional security apparatchiks to intimidate the struggle to reconstruct Nigeria, in their blind and unintelligent attempt to sustain the clearly unworkable status quo.
"If they were serious, they would have addressed the FG to grant Biafra freedom to secede, but they are childishly targeting Igbo property in the North, without advancing total complete split of the country.
"Igbo property in the North have always been used to blackmailing our people, while the mindless oppression continues. We therefore plead with this unknown group to write to the National Assembly, northern leaders and the United Nations, to as a matter of urgency, grant a referendum on the future of Nigeria. That way, everybody will take them serious.
"Targeting our properties in the North do not frighten anybody, we are used to that. We beg them to amend their childish statement to demand for an early referendum. That would make more sense. Our people are living in hell already. We are not scared of war mongering, Referendum is the way to go."
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Open letter to Prof Ango Abdullahi
Vanguard News / 26th June, 2017.
By Prof. B.I.C Ijomah
Prof. Ango Abdullahi,
OUR attention has been drawn to your statements in Vanguard of Saturday, June 10, 2017. You are alleged to be in support of the call on the Igbo to quit. It is unfortunate, grossly unfortunate, that a scholar of your calibre will be so partisan as to be unable to see the wisdom in retaining Nigeria as a corporate entity. I know you have, in the past, been anti-Igbo.
*Prof Ango AbdullahiProf Ango Abdullahi
One would have thought that our education exposes us to a level where we can live even with our enemies. You said in the alleged publication that, “each year up to the time Nigeria gained its independence, none of the two regions East and West was able to produce for its self. I mean none of the Western and Eastern Regions had the money to effectively run the affairs of the region until they got financial support from the Northern Region.” It is this assumption of yours that I want to address.
First of all it is not true that the North had bailed out Eastern Region or the Western Region. But you claim that even before independence none of the regions could live without Northern subvention. Let me draw your attention to the facts before independence. You should read W.M.M Geary’s work titled “Nigeria under the British Rule” published by the Cass and Company Limited, London (1927).
Subsidizing the North
May I draw your attention especially to pages 124 and 125. You will see published, General Revenue for the Northern and Southern Protectorates before the Amalgamation and the Percentage of Total Revenue originating from the North (figures in pounds), 1903 to 1913. You will see that contrary to your argument, it was indeed the South that was subsidizing the North. I am reproducing the tables here for clarity.
I also draw your attention to Abstracts of Revenue, 1809 to 1913. You will also see that the North could not have survived without the Imperial grant and the support of the South. When you look at the third table, Northern Nigeria revenue paid by the South and the Imperial grant, it will disabuse your mind and show you that without the South and the Imperial grant, the Northern government/states could not have existed.
Indeed, one of the reasons for the amalgamation was the fact that the British colonial government was tired of carrying the burden of the North and they thought that by merging the Southern and Northern protectorates, the country would be stable. Indeed, the circumstances that forced the British government to amalgamate the Northern protectorate and the Southern protectorate on January 1, 1914 were motivated neither by political exigencies nor by a closer cultural understanding among the diverse elements of the conglomeration that was later to be called Nigeria. It is obvious that the primary interest of the British government was economic.
It was also obvious that the Northern protectorate, because of its geographical location and cloudy economic prospects, was not likely to be viable. In fact, the Lugard administration was finding it rather difficult to maintain the Northern protectorate which was already running into deficit. Testifying to the financial difficulty of the North and the anticipated prosperity that would follow the projected amalgamation of the Northern protectorate with the Southern protectorate, Lord Lugard reported that “the prosperity of the Southern protectorate as evidenced by the liquor trade, had risen by 57 per cent. In fact, the liquor trade alone yielded a revenue of One Million, One Hundred and Thirty-Eight Thousand pounds (£1,138,000) in 1913. This he believed was the result of amalgamation of the Lagos colony with the Southern protectorate.
The Northern administration could not have survived without the imperial grant-in-aid which in the year before the amalgamation stood at One Hundred and Thirty Six thousand Pounds, (£136,000) and had averaged Three Hundred and Fourteen Thousand, Five Hundred Pounds (£314,500) for the eleven years ending in March, 1912. Besides, the burden of financing the North seemed to have been resisted and bitterly criticized by the Southerners. The expenditure of the British tax payer’s money in financing a colonial territory was a contradiction of the British colonial policy enunciated sixty (60) years before by L. Gray which stipulated that “the surest test for the soundness of measures for improvement of an uncivilized people is that they should be self-supporting.”
Economic position
This is by L. Gray in The Colonial Policy of the Administration of Lord Russell, London: Cass and Company Limited, 1853, page 281″. Further, the Northern protectorate was not only land-locked but bounded by territories that fell under the influence of other European powers. It was, therefore, inconceivable how the economic position would have improved without aid from the South.
The only alternative open to Lord Lugard was to amalgamate the North and the South and thus have a legitimate reason for the expenditure of revenue from the South in developing the North. Details of this manouevre was laid bare in a letter written by Lord Lugard on November 22, 1912 to his wife explaining how he had used the Southern resources to finance the Northern deficit.
Regardless of the merit which Sir F.D Lugard saw in his financial amalgamation of the South and the North, the prevalence of bitter criticism in the South shows the unpopularity of the amalgamation. At that time, the export from the South stood at Five Million, One Hundred and Twenty-Two Thousand Pounds (£5,232,000) while the export from the North stood at Two Hundred Thousand Pounds (£200,000) in 1910. This was very discouraging to the colonial system and called for urgent remedy. On Tuesday, January 31, 1911, there were attacks on the colonial secretary’s suggestion that the South should advance a loan of Two Hundred Thousand Pounds (£200,000) to the North for the completion of the Baro to Kano railway, in addition to the sum of One Million, Two Hundred and Thirty Thousand which was required from the South.
One of the criticisms of the Northern dependence on the South was voiced out by Honourable Sapara Williams who contended that before the loan was to be granted, the Secretary of State should settle the type of relationship that existed between Lagos and Zungeru, the two administrative headquarters for the South and the North respectively.
Existing hostility
He contended that as far as he was concerned, that the Southerners were strangers to anything connected with the railway after it has passed Offa, the last Yoruba town on the line. He referred to the existing hostility between the North and the South, particularly as regards the issues of extending the Northern boundary of the Southern protectorate to incorporate Yoruba territories now locked up in the Northern protectorate.
My dear Professor, the hostility of the Northerners towards the Southerners is not new in the Nigerian history. Even during the time of Sapara Williams, the Northerners did not see anything reasonable in the relationship with the South.
You will recall the massacres of the Igbos in Jos in 1945; you will recall the massacres of the Igbos in Kano in 1953; you will recall the massacres that preceded the civil war. If we cannot live together, Mr. Professor, don’t you think that it is high time we told ourselves the naked truth. You will also recall that in 1964, after the crisis that followed the elections, that Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe had called on Nigerians to call a round table conference to discuss how we could share our assets if it was impossible for us to live together. We kept on patching this unpatchable relationship. In my honest opinion, this relationship has soured enough that it will take the wisdom of God to make us love one another.
We went to Aburi and there the leaders agreed that the only solution to our problems was to have a confederation but Gowon reneged. You will recall also that the British government, after the crisis of 1951-1952, realized that this country could not be a unitary state and they brought in the 1953 constitution which gave us regional autonomy. If the colonial masters in their wisdom knew that we could not be a unitary government and gave us what we had at independence, we should have respected their wisdom. You will also recall that after the civil war, the regional autonomy which our independence conferred on us was violated by the military government led by the Northern soldiers. We ended up having this contraption that we are having now; it has not worked. It will not work, unless there is proper restructuring of the nation. We should stop pretending.
I believe in all sincerity that if we cannot accommodate every segment of the federation in one Nigeria, we should call a constitutional conference to decide how this country can be restructured so that every area can take care of itself and we can relate on certain agreed basis. We have slaughtered ourselves enough. We do not want another civil war in order to justify the existence of “One Nigeria”.
May I humbly call on all Nigerians to examine the last constitutional conference which addressed the issue of restructuring. Let us not leave it to our youths to tell us when we can stay together or when we cannot stay together. The youths in Biafra are crying; the youths in the North are crying; the Niger Delta youths are crying. The middle belt is not happy with what is happening to them.
Added to these, the strategies of the herdsmen to penetrate every nook and corner of Nigeria, is raising some issues for national discourse. The Federal Government has deliberately refused to call the herdsmen to order. They have killed many people and ravaged many communities. None of them has been arrested. Why? In May 2016, I published two articles and warned that the activities of the herdsmen was a plot which would soon cover the whole country. The heavy silence of the Federal Government tends to support the view that the herdsmen are on an undisclosed mission which only time would tell.
The Government must listen to the call for restructuring in order to have a workable nation. The military, for partisan reasons, jettisoned the independence constitution and foisted an unworkable constitution on Nigeria. Let us be humble and accept that we made a gross mistake by throwing away our independence constitution. It is now clear that unless we return to a structure that guarantees regional autonomy, there will be no peace in this country. The earlier we returned to regional autonomy the better for us.
Regional autonomy
I want you to look at the tables I have given you to see that your postulation that the North, before independence, had been carrying the burden of the South is a fallacy. The statistics I have given you here were not compiled by me. They were compiled by the colonial government in 1809 and 1813. They show that the North has always been the Southern burden. Even in this administration, without the resources from the South, the North cannot make it. This is a gospel truth. But if the North believes it can go without the South, what prevents us from restructuring so that the North can be on its own and the South can be on its own.
Let us call on our government to look seriously at this unworkable structure called Nigeria. We must not allow our youths to be slaughtered again defending the indefensible. This federation as it is, is unworkable.
My dear Professor let us come together as scholars and look at our country very objectively. You may also want to read some of my works such as: Nigerian Nationalism & the Problems of Socio-Political Integration and Quo Vadis (Where Are You Going) Nigeria?& Other Essays.
My sincere regards
Prof. B.I.C Ijomah
CONCLUDED.
Prof. B.I.C Ijomah is a professor of Political Sociology. He has lectured at Northwestern University in Chicago and Evanston, USA. He has been a university Registrar; Professor and Dean Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He has worked at University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Loyola University of Chicago, USA; Federal University of Technology, Akure and Ambrose Alli University from where he retired voluntarily to set up his own educational institution. He is a co-founder of South-South Peoples, Conference and a leader in PANDEF.
The post Open letter to Prof Ango Abdullahi appeared first on Vanguard News.
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OPEN LETTER TO THE AREWA YOUTHS.
By Charles Ogbu.
Brethren from the North,
I bring you greetings from the Southern part of Nigeria.
On behalf of the peace-loving people of the south in general and millions of Igbo youths in particular, I start this letter by commending you for your recent open letter to the acting president, professor Yemi Osinbajo, where you called on the pastor-turned politician to organise a Referendum for the Igbos to enable them determine their future in line with international law on self determination.
By that letter, you proved to be better versed and more sophisticated in legal matters and ways of international laws with regards to the right of Indigenous People on Self Determination than the acting President who ironically is a law professor but who happen to think that quest for self determination is a crime simply because the fraudulent document known as the 1999 constitution imposed on us by military thugs did not recognise it.
Having said these, let me come to the main reason why I'm here. In your letter to the Ag. President, I noticed what I've been trying to figure out whether to classify as an innocent amnesia-induced oversight or a calculated attempt to re-write history on your part.
You cited the January 15th coup which you mischievously tagged Igbo coup and claimed was the Igbos manifestating their hatred for Nigeria. Quite frankly, when I read that part, I was left wondering whether to pause and die laughing or die crying.
You and your kind invented the word "hatred" and even went further to prove that indeed, it is not just a word. You started manifesting hatred for other Nigerians as far back as 1945 when your kind butchered hundreds of innocent southerners mostly Igbos in North central Nigerian city of Jos in an anti-Igbo pogrom, 15 years before Nigeria even got her independence from Britain. And of course, your Vampiric spirit would later rise again in search of more Igbo blood in 1953 when your people carried out another anti-Igbo pogrom in Kano which resulted in another hundreds of Igbo lives being wasted once again. This time, all you needed to start doing what you know how best to do was a minor legislative disagreement at the Lagos parliament where your lawmakers were booed for trying to delay a motion for Nigeria's independence by claiming the North wasn't yet ready for self rule.
Isn't it a classic definition of irony that a people who started doing exceptionally well in the business of killing and maiming their fellow Nigerians as far back as 1945 when Nigeria had not even dreamt of gaining independence would now open their mouth and accuse others of manifesting "hatred for Nigeria unity"? If you ever believed in the so called Nigeria's unity, why kill and maim your fellow Nigerians for the flimsiest of excuses??
Secondly, the January 1966 coup was not an Igbo coup. It was a coup carried out by mostly junior army officers led by Major Kaduna Chukwuma Nzeogwu and it had soldiers from Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa/fulani, Tiv, Esan, Ijaw, Urhobo, Bali etc on board. Hassan Usman Katsina, an hausa/fulani, who was later made military governor of Northern region, was Nzeogwu's right hand man and a major participant all through the period of the coup. Major Adewale Ademoyega, the author of "Why We Struck" was of the same rank as Nzeogwu. He was an active participant in the coup. There were major Ifeajuna, Lt. Fola Oyewole of "The Reluctant Rebel", Lt. Tijani Katsina and Saleh Dambo who were both hausa/fulani, there was Lt. Hope Harris Egheagha among other Igbos.
And that same coup was foiled by two brave Igbo men, Aguyi Ironsi in Lagos (West) and Ojukwu in Kano (North).
Now, assuming WITHOUT CONCEDING that the January 15th coup was organized and executed by only Igbo army officers, does it not still amount to conscientious idiocy for you guys to blame the whole Igbo nation for a coup carried out by few military men from the region?? How can anyone seek to justify the savagery visited on defenceless Igbo men, women and children residing in the North in the aftermath of that coup?? Did Nzeogwu who was from Delta state consult the indigens of the state before leading that coup?
How come we don't blame Dimka's coup on his ethnic group neither do we blame IBB and Buhari's coup on the whole hausa/Fulanis?
Let me quickly remind you that in the evening of the January 15th coup, a Boeing 707 belonging to the Nigerian Airways arrived Kano with almost the whole Northern establishment back from Lagos where they had gone to attend Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference. Ojukwu, it was, who received them at the airport and even when orders from the coup plotters were to shot all Politicians, Ojukwu gifted them with protection. I don't suppose you would like this kind of history, seeing as it seem to contradict the adulterated version you were groomed with.
In the said letter, you correctly stated that Ojukwu refused to recognize Gowon but you mischievously failed to state that Ojukwu's refusal to recognise Gowon was in protest over the refusal of the hausa/fulani military officers who killed the head of state, Aguyi Ironsi, to allow Brigadier Ogundipe to take over as the next in rank according to military tradition.
Still in that same letter, you stated that Ojukwu declared Biafra but you conveniently failed to tell the public that Ojukwu didn't just wake up in the morning, smoke his Benson cigarette and rushed to declare Biafra. He (Ojukwu) did his best to de-escalate tension and even succeeded in reaching a landmark accord with Gowon in Aburi, Ghana, which if implemented, would have put an end to the Igbo genocide going on in the North and averted the moral tragedy that was the Biafra war. But, Gowon, unilaterally chose to defy the terms of this last minute Aburi Accord, leaving the Oxford product, Ojukwu, with no choice but to pull his people out of a country that was and still is, deaf, dumb and blind to the sanctity of the lives of the same people it exists mainly to protect.
Let me quickly say this not just to you, The Arewa Youths but to all Nigerians and foreigners alike:
This current Biafra agitation IS NOT a bait for Igbo presidency, Restructuring or appointments. Any Igbo man thinking it is should simply go for a DNA test to ascertain not just his paternity but his ancestry, too. My generation is simply sick and tired of sharing the same country with people who derive enormous pleasure from killing their fellow human beings over the flimsiest of excuses like the burning of the Koran in a far away Afghanistan, the shooting of a Palestinian boy by a murderous Israeli soldier in Gaza, the drawing of the cartoon of Prophet Muhammad in far away Denmark by a cartoonist who is neither Igbo nor Nigerian.
Igbo youths are not aggrieved with Nigeria solely because their parents were massacred in the Biafra war. We are aggrieved because almost 50 years after the war, the same people who killed our parents are still killing us even in our homes using fulani herdsmen, in our churches and cities using hausa/fulani soldiers who kill us and bath us with acid, and our places of business using almajiris who slaughter us and burn our shops with state-sponsored impunity for no just cause other than the insatiable urge to spill blood.
My fellow youths, we have lied to ourselves for far too long. How about a little honesty here? All these killings points to one thing which is that our world views are world apart. While you delight in resorting to violence as solution to almost every disagreement, we, the Igbos and indeed, all southerners have serious aversion to bloodshed. It is our belief that our God fight for us, not the other way round.
I love the concluding part of your letter where you rightly asserted that the Biafra agitation is not an issue over which a single drop of blood should be shed. We agree completely. We have all advanced beyond the primitive era of war. We are not asking for war. We are only asking for a YES or NO vote known as Referendum. Now, my dear brethren, add a little work to your faith by prevailing on your leaders who control every facet of the Nigerian govt to allow for a Plebiscite for the Igbos. After they have voted and the YES vote carries the day, you can then give Igbos living in your region whatever condition under which you want them to live if they still want to continue living in your midst.
Dishing out quit notice to Igbos residing in your region when they are yet to be officially granted their referendum and Biafra is only tantamount to putting the cart before the horse. Until the Igbos officially get their Biafra, they remain Nigerians with all the right and privileges of Nigerian citizens including the right of living and doing business anywhere in Nigeria.
Lastly, let me conclude by reminding you that even in the event of a successful referendum for Biafra, all property legally acquired by the Igbos anywhere in Nigeria remain theirs and are protected by international law. Nigerians did not loose their property in Britain when the latter granted her independence in 1960, did they?? The world has progressed considerably. I would remind you that the 'abandoned property' era is over but I'm sure you know that, don't you??
Instead of killing ourselves and creating IDPs everywhere, let us peacefully do "To Your Tent, Oh, Israel!". That way, we will still do things together but as good neighbours under a mutually agreed terms.
Love From A Biafran,
Charles Ogbu
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Igbo dare Arewa: We won't leave North …demand Ango Abdullahi's arrest
~Punch Nigeria. Sunday, June 11, 2017.
• Osinbajo sues for peace
• IPOB backs quit notice
The Eze N'digbo (traditional rulers) and leaders of Igbo socio-cultural associations in the North have vowed to resist any attempt by the Coalition of Northern Groups to chase them out of the region.
The coalition groups are: Arewa Citizens Action for Change, led by Nastura Ashir Sharif; Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, led by Shettima Yerima; Arewa Youth Development Foundation, led by Aminu Adam; and the Arewa Students Forum, led by Alfred Solomon.
Others are, Northern Emancipation Network, led by Abdul-azeez Suleiman; Northern Youth Vanguard, led by Joshua Viashman; Northern Youth Stakeholders Forum, led by Mohammad Mohammad; North-East Assembly, led by Mohammed Tasiupantami; and North Central People's Front, led by Nathaniel Ajegenaadigizi.
Concerned by the outrage that greeted the declaration, Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, and the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, ordered the arrest of the signatories to the declaration, but none of the youths has been apprehended as of Saturday.
The tension generated by the declaration of the northern youths worsened on Friday afternoon, when a prominent member of the Northern Elders' Forum, and former Ahmadu Bello University Vice Chancellor, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, threw his weight behind the coalition.
The group of northern elders also expressed "disappointment" with the Northern Governors' Forum for disowning the coalition, insisting that it was hypocritical for the Igbo to continue to live in other parts of the country while agitating for Nigeria's breakup.
Speaking with one of our correspondents, the Eze Ndigbo of Kano, Boniface Ibekwe, said the over three million Igbo indigenes in Kano would not leave the city with all their investments acquired over several decades.
He said, "We have advised our people to remain calm and that nobody should travel. The lives and property Igbo are secure. As far as I am concerned, no Igbo man has relocated with his family to the East. We are here and going about our normal business. The northern groups fanning the embers of war have never experienced the pains and after-effects of war because, if they had, they would always pray for the sustenance of peace, unity and stability.''
Also, the Eze Ndigbo of Kaduna, Igwe Sylvanus Aneke, told one of our correspondents that his people were not afraid of the plans of the Arewa youths, especially when the Federal Government had stepped into the matter.
He said, "The youths have asked us to leave, but their parents, the police, the state government and the Federal Government have asked us to ignore the threat. We will rather listen to the elders and the government.
"Ango Abdullahi merely expressed his opinion. We are not taking him seriously because we are used to his antics. We are watching the events for now. We will take our decisions after we have watched, prayed and discovered that nothing has changed."
The President General of the Igbo Community Welfare Association in Kaduna State, Chris Nnoli, also urged Igbo in the North to stay still.
He said, "It (the ultimatum) is a serious issue that should naturally be taken seriously. We are concerned, but since the Kaduna State Government has assured us of safety, we want to hold on to this assurance. I am greatly worried that up till this moment, nobody has been apprehended over the issue. We are watching events and we believe that government will intensify action and get the youths arrested. It is when we have seen that the government and the IG's assurances are not effective that we will start to think of other means of seeking protection."
The Eze Igbo III, Jos South in Plateau State, Lawrence Onwudinjo, who is also the President, Igbo Cultural Association, said no Igbo person would leave the North on account of any threat from any northern youth.
He said, "Igbo people in Plateau State are going nowhere. There is no right-thinking human being that will ask people to leave where they are living. This is one Nigeria where we are living. Nigeria belongs to all of us. I believe that if any part of the country needs anything, they should sit down together to discuss it. Everybody should come to a roundtable to discuss it."
Another Igbo leader in Lantang, James Abraham, said no Igbo would relocate and that if they would have to move, northerners in the South-East should be waiting for their quit notice too.
He said, "If the Arewa youths tell us to leave the North, their kinsmen in the South-East should also be ready to leave. Do the Arewa youths have representatives in Plateau State? They should not be taken seriously."
The President General of the Igbo community in Sokoto, Onyebuchi Uwaga, told SUNDAY PUNCH that, following the assurance from the government and the police, no Igbo would leave the North.
Also, the Ezeigbo I of Nasarawa State, Nathaniel Nduba, in calling for the immediate arrest of the Arewa youths in the interest of peace, pointed out that no Igbo person would leave the region, despite the threat given by the northern coalition.
A yam seller in Nasarawa, Mrs. Amaka Chukwudi, also said, "The threat by the AYCF was an empty threat. They forget that they have their brothers and sisters spread across other states. Has anybody asked them to leave? Why should the northerners give such an ultimatum?"
Igbo in Bauchi State, in reaction to the ultimatum, also stated that they would not leave the North.
One of them, Joshua Chukwu, said, ''For me, I will not take laws into my hands but will remain law-abiding, as the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria guarantees everyone, irrespective of tribe or origin, the right to reside in whatever part of the country he deems fit to pursue his legitimate business."
Similarly, Igbo in Niger State told SUNDAY PUNCH that they would ignore the threat and carry on with their legitimate activities without exercising any fear.
A businessman, Tochukwu Chikwem, said he had no plans to send his family back to the East.
Another Igbo man in Minna, Felix Irojiogu, said, "They are seeking recognition or attention which they don't deserve. They are wasting their time; government should arrest them for trying to cause problem in the country."
In Katsina State, the mood of defiance was also noticed when a businessman, Jude Eze, said, "How can I listen to the rantings of those rascals? You should know they don't know the consequences of what they are saying. It took our leaders and elders years of sweat, and some even paid with their lives, to get Nigeria to this stage and some boys who have never gone beyond their villages are saying we should pack our belongings and go. We are not going anywhere."
Meanwhile, Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari, has assured non-indigenes in the state of their safety.
But in Sokoto State, some Igbo men have made up their minds to leave, stressing that anyone who ignores the Arewa youths' threat would do so at his peril.
One of them, Uchendu Sunday, a father of three, who operates a patent medicine store at Mabera, in Sokoto, said, "I grew up in Kano. Sadly, my elder brother was killed there during a violent demonstration against the United States of America, when Osama bin Laden was declared wanted in 2001, after the bombing of the World Trade Centre.
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"It was this sad memory that haunted me out of Kano to Sokoto. This is why I have decided to end my sojourn in the North and return to the East with my wife and three children. One thing I can assure you is that there will be an exodus of Igbo from the North, based on this ultimatum."
In the East, various groups and associations said they had no intention of issuing a similar ultimatum to northerners living among them.
Speaking for Igbo youths, the President of Ohanaeze Youth Council, the youth wing of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Okechukwu Isiguzoro, said, "We will not ask northerners to leave. We will continue to show them love, as Igbo have done in the past."
Reacting to the ultimatum, the leader of the northern community in Enugu State, Sarkin Hausawa, Idris Ado Suleiman, stated that they exercised no fear of any tit-for-tat response by their eastern hosts.
Suleiman said, "We have heard about the ultimatum. They said Igbo in the North should leave in three months. But we know it is not something that is possible."
Osinbajo sues for peace
Acting President Prof Yemi Osinbajo on Saturday called on the various ethnic groups in Nigeria to live in peace, saying that in any marriage, there was tendency for disagreement.
Osinbajo spoke at the wedding of the daughter of the founding National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Chief Bisi Akande, Wuraola, and Dr. Olawale Solabi in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
The Acting President's message came on the heels of an ultimatum issued by Arewa youth wings to Igbo people living in northern Nigeria.
Osinbajo said it was common for nations with different ethnic nationalities to experience quarrels among themselves like in any marriage.
According to him, agitations and quarrels can best be addressed when people give peace a chance and work in unity.
Osinbajo said, instead of fanning the embers of disagreement within ethnic groups, it would be better if understanding was allowed to prevail.
He said, "Marriage is a very large institution that requires a lot of prayers. It is the same marriage that nations go through. Our nation has been in marriage for a while now.
"Sometimes, there are quarrels within that marriage. Sometimes, there is disagreement. What is important is that you must remain together. You must remain united."
Among dignitaries at the wedding ceremony were Senate President, Bukola Saraki, Oyo State Governor, Abiola Ajimobi, Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun, Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State; and Governor Muhammad Badaru of Jigawa State.
An ex-governor of Osun State, Olagunsoye Oyinlola and a former governor of Ekiti State, Segun Oni, were also present.
IPOB backs quit notice for Igbo
The Indigenous People of Biafra on Saturday supported the three-month quit notice served on the Igbo living in the northern part of the country by the Arewa youths.
IPOB, in a press statement made available to our correspondent in Awka by the group's media and publicity secretary, Emma Powerful, commended the northern youths and Arewa Elders Forum for fast-tracking the Biafra exit with their pronouncements.
READ ALSO: Sokoto is your home, Tambuwal tells Igbos
The group maintained that the quit notice had a human face, unlike the situation in the past, when the people perceived as Biafrans were attacked without any notice or provocation.
IPOB said it would prevail on Igbo living in the North to adhere to the quit notice.
The statement read, "Biafrans in general wish to thank these vocal northerners for at least having the courtesy to issue advance warning this time before embarking on their routine massacre of the Igbo and other Biafrans living in northern Nigeria; unlike what their fathers did in 1966.
"We promise to adhere to your warning to leave northern Nigeria because a word is enough for the wise. Biafrans and other southerners should start packing their belongings to come down to the South.
"We also advise the northern youths and their elders to keep it up because all they have done is to exercise their right to free speech which is not a crime under any law known to man.
"We are therefore against those calling for the arrest of these Arewa youths and their elders."
'Nigeria can't afford another civil war'
A former Nigerian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, and a former Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, Justice Mustapha Akanbi (retd.), have warned against any attempt to break Nigeria.
They cautioned that such an act could lead to another civil war and warned that Nigeria cannot afford another civil war, leading to another wanton destruction of lives and property.
Gambari spoke during the fifth convocation of Kwara State University in Malete, Moro Local Government of Kwara State, while Akanbi spoke on the sidelines of a summit organised by Home and Street Kids Welfare Initiative in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.
PANDEF seeks arrest of Arewa youths
The Pan Niger Delta Forum has condemned the ultimatum issued on the Igbo in the North by some Arewa youth groups.
It described the three-month quit notice as "an act of treason which portends great threat to the nation's unity."
PANDEF, led by Ijaw national leader, Chief Edwin Clark, said the group considered the statement by the Arewa youths as "too dangerous."
The statement, signed by Dr. Alfred Mulade, called on northern state governments, elders, particularly the Arewa Consultative Assembly, in whose House the press conference was held, not only to condemn it but take concrete steps to reassure the Igbo of their safety in the region.
Igbo youths in North call for Ango's arrest
The Ndigbo in the North, under the aegis of Northern Youth Council of Nigeria on Saturday demanded the arrest of Prof. Ango Abdullahi, the spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum.
Abdullahi had at a press conference on Friday backed the three-month ultimatum by a coalition of Northern group to the N'digbo in the region to vacate the place before October 1, 2017.
The group, at a press conference, by its spokesperson, Isa Abubakar, urged security operatives to immediately arrest the NEF spokesman, following what it described as his hate speech.
Why Urhobo can't be part of Biafra - Urhobo leaders
Urhobo leaders, under the auspices of Urhobo Leaders of Thought, have condemned the proposed Biafra Republic map which included Urhobo as one its territory.
They maintained that Urhobo people did not share culture or customs with Igbo people in the southern part of the country.
ULT, in a statement by its Secretary-General, Mr Mumakai Unugha, on Saturday, also condemned the recent ultimatum issued to Igbo residents in the northern part of the country, describing it as reckless and provocative.
IYC asks FG to intervene in Arewa - Igbo conflict
The Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide has called on the Federal Government to show strong and purposeful leadership by stopping the building tension between the North and the Igbo .
IYC spokesman, Mr. Henry Iyalla, who spoke in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on Saturday, decried the manner in which government was handling the quit order given to Igbo people living in the North.
Iyalla explained that it was necessary for the Muhammadu Buhari-led government to arrest the situation at its preliminary stage and not when it must have escalated.
---------------------------------------------------The quit notice to Igbo in the North
Tribune Nigeria. Monday, June 12, 2017.
ON Tuesday, June 6, Nigeria's fragile ethnic relations witnessed yet another deadly blow. Fifteen groups of youths from the northern part of the country under the aegis of the Coalition of Northern Youth Groups (CNYG) issued an ultimatum to the Igbo ethnic stock living in that part of the country to, within three months, quit their land, an ultimatum which they said would expire on October 1. At first, the ultimatum sounded like a joke from some idle youths. The expectation from the rest of Nigeria was that elderly Nigerians from that part of the country who understood the nature of the fragility of the inter-ethnic relations in the country would call the apparently misguided youths to order.
However, the stridency of the call has ignited a seismic shake in the Nigerian polity. Shockingly, some otherwise highly respected Nigerians from the North and different groups have joined in the self-serving chorus. While the Northern Governors Forum disclaimed the call, saying it was not representative of the position of the North, some other groups have openly backed it. For instance, the Northern Elders' Forum (NEF) supported the call, saying that it was representative of the Northern view. The NEF leadership said that the welter of criticisms that had trailed the ultimatum notwithstanding, the Igbo should leave the North in three months, in compliance with the Northern youths' ultimatum.
Last week, in a chat with newsmen in Zaria, Kaduna State, the NEF spokesperson, Professor Ango Abdullahi, claimed that it was hypocritical for the Igbo to continue to live in other parts of the country while agitating for Nigeria to break up. According to him, "I am disappointed in the decision taken by the Northern Governors' Forum disowning and condemning the agitation by these young, agile and progressive youth groups. Let me ask these governors who they are representing. Are they representing spirits, ghost or the people of the North?"
The Kaduna State government's reaction to the calls by the CNYG and the NEF was most timely. The governor of the state, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, had not only disclaimed the call by the youth coalition, but also ordered that they should be ferreted out and arrested. Many explanations have indeed been given to the CNYG's call and the backing it is receiving from otherwise respected persons and groups in the North. The first is that it was made in retaliation following the calls by Nnamdi Kanu of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) who is facing treason charges but was recently released on bail. Kanu and his clique have ceaselessly agitated for an independent Biafran State, a narrative that is vexatious to many people and groups that benefit from the incongruous unitarist federalism that Nigeria has practised since the 1966 coup. Some have also suggested that the call on the Igbo to quit the North could be a ploy by some people to cause chaos in the polity and actualise their nefarious agenda.
We commend the Kaduna State government for its prompt and decisive action and also gives kudos to those who have risen above the separatist call of the CNYG. The logic that escapes Professor Abdullahi and others in his boat is that Kanu does not necessarily represent the view of the entire South-East of Nigeria. To single a people out for condemnation and recrimination following the perceived infraction of a few persons is illogical. As things stand, the northern elements behind the latest call may still have to issue more ultimatums to other parts of Nigeria who believe that the lopsidedness of the Nigerian political structure is at the root of the fragile relationships among Nigerians. Yet, the way to permanently shut up the Kanus of this world is to go to the root of the problem: the Nigerian state is fragile and needs restructuring.
While most northern groups keep sticking to the wonky unitarist structure that has dragged the country down in all spheres, those who know that it is the bane of the Nigerian existence have always kicked against it. No matter the number and frequency of arrests made of those who ask for the restructuring of the pseudo-federation and those who, when this call is not heeded, take up individual gauntlets to affront the polity, the problem is still there and can only worsen. Unless the country goes to the root of its problems, it is only toying with fire.
It must be said that even though fissiparous tendencies have always existed in Nigeria, they have been further ignited now because there is a general perception that the present government is not fostering a sense of national belonging in terms of the spread of appointments across the geopolitical zones. To worsen matters, the parlous economy causes people to blame their hunger on ethnic disequilibrium. Those who chase shadows by issuing quit notices to fellow nationals from their region should lend their voices to the call on the government to restructure the country.
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Southern leaders demand Arewa youths to withdraw ultimatum.
Bola Badmus - Lagos
LEADERS of South-West, South-East and South-South on Sunday strongly called on Arewa youths and their sponsors to withdraw the quit notice given to the people of the South-East as failure to do so will be taken as an ultimatum given to the entire Southern Nigerians to quit their region.
The prominent leaders, who comprised pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo; former Chief of Staff, Ebitu Ukiwe; Albert Horsfall, Jor Irukwu, former Minister of Information, Walter Ofonagoro; Senator Femi Okunronmu, Senator Bassey Henshaw, among others, declared that any attack against anybody from the South would be considered an attack against the Southern Nigeria.
This was just as the leaders reaffirmed their stand on restructuring of the country, demanding that the Federal Government must come out with concrete steps on the implementation of 2014 National Conference Report before October 1, 2017.
The leaders said this in a communique read by Mr Yinka Odumakin at the end of their meeting, which took place at the Lekki residence of Chief Adebanjo, just as they enjoined the Federal Government to seriously live up to the primary responsibility of any government which was to protect the lives and property of every citizen of Nigeria wherever they might reside.
The communique was signed by Chief Adebanjo for South-West, Albert Horsefall for South-South and former Chief of General Staff, Commodore Ebitu Ikiwe (rtd) for South-East.
“We also demand that Arewa youths and their sponsors must withdraw the quit notice given to the people of the South-East as failure to do so, will be taken as an ultimatum given to the entire Southern Nigeria to quit their region and any attack against anybody from the South, will be considered an attack against the Southern Nigeria.
“We, therefore, advise the Federal Government to take seriously and live up to the primary responsibility of any government which is to protect the lives and property of every citizen of Nigeria wherever they may reside,” the southern leaders said.
The leaders said they decided to come together to forge a common and formidable front against the backdrop of the ultimatum given by the Arewa youths to the people of South-East and by extension to all southerners to vacate the North by October 1, 2017 and the refusal of the Nigerian state to activate the law against any of them.
The communique said such refusal by the authorities gave the impression that these youths were not acting on their own, but with the backing of their establishment.
The communique said: “We consider the need to avert the impending danger arising from the ultimatum given by the Arewa youths.
“We agree that there is a growing demand by our people and other Nigerians to form a stronger federation in which principles and practice of true federalism are upheld.
“We observe that the cry for self-determination will continue unabated and become much more stringent unless the Federal Government sincerely address the issues of restructuring of Nigeria.
“We, therefore, resolve that we reject the attempt to reduce the current crisis in Nigeria flowing from the unresolved nationality question to an Igbo and North affair.”
The leaders, while noting the intervention on the part of the Federal Government, insisted that any further discussion on this crisis should be between the entire South and the North of Nigeria, adding, “The South-East is advised to consider any further meeting where the South-West and South-South are not involved as not of southern Nigeria because the issues involved affects all of us.
“The meeting also condemned in strongest terms the activities of Fulani herdsmen, who have taken over the entire Southern Nigeria and Middle Belt of Nigeria, including invading State House of Assemblies preventing them from making laws, cows going to classrooms and chasing our children out of schools, killing our farmers on their farms and raping their wives.
“Now, we also resolved on the need for the restructuring of Nigeria and to uphold the principles of true federalism as agreed by the founding fathers of Nigeria and practiced effectively in the years before the first military coup in Nigeria.
“We reaffirm our stand on the true federalism is the system of government founded on the democratic principles and institution in which the power to govern is shared between the national and the federating units. Such units have control over their own affairs and bequeathed equal status with their constitution which is consistent with the federal constitution.
“We affirm and resolve in the implementation of the report of the 2014 National Conference aimed at complete transformation and restructuring of our country and to build and confederate Nigeria unity through peaceful and harmonious unity, progress and genuine development.
“We want concrete steps taken on the implementation of 2014 National Conference Report before 1st October 2017.
“We resolve to reawaken once more the spirit of friendship and mutual respect among our people and extol our common determination to pursue peace, progress and enhance the continued existence of Nigeria just as we commend the convener of this dialogue in bringing us together. We appeal to them to continue to do so in future.
Also in attendance at the meeting were: Dr. Okey Anueyiaya, Chief Sydney Dike, Chief Eric Ebeh, Senator Bucknor Akerele, Ogita Iyalla-Finnih, Dr Kunle Olajide, Chief Mike Uwaka, Abdulaziz Ude, Chief Goddy Uwazurike, Prof George Obiozor, Charles Odunukwe, Iyaze Ebigwe, Col. Tony Iyiam, Dr. Amos Akingba, Supo Shonibare, Chief Tokunbo Ajasin, Air Comodore Idongest Nkanga (rtd), Chief Guy Ikokwu, among others.
Copyright © 2017 | Tribune Online
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Igbo quit notice: Pan Yoruba group calls for Oodua Republic
By Olasunkanmni Akoni
~Vanguard Nigeria. Monday, June 12, 2017.
A Pan Yoruba group, O'odua Nationalist Coalition, (ONAC) has called on Yoruba people to prepare for their own sovereign nation, "Oodua" Republic, following the lingering agitation for the breakup of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
It will be recalled that a Coalition of Northern Youth Groups, last Tuesday, at a press conference, warned the Igbo to leave the North within three months.
In response to the warning, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPoB), one of the groups spearheading the agitation for the separation of the South-East from Nigeria, has asked Igbo and other southerners resident in the North to start packing to leave the region
A statement issued by a Yoruba group at the weekend and signed by Oluwole Suleimann, Michael Popoola, and Mrs. Aduke Fadahunsi, and made available to Vanguard, stressed the need for the creation of Yoruba sovereign nation, Oduduwa Republic.
The group stressed that it became necessary in the face of the lingering problems and conflict built around the national question that has stunted the growth of Nigeria for over a century.
"This conflict has again reared its head, 50 years after a civil war that inflicted pain and misery on the Yoruba people apart from distorting the development plan of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo for the South West," the group stated.
ONAC is made up of 18 Pan Yoruba groups including the Oodua Peoples Congress, (OPC), Oodua Liberation Movement, (OLM), Oodua Republic Coalition, (ORC), Yoruba Revolutionary Congress, (YORC), Oodua Muslim-Christian Dialogue Group , (OMDG), Yoruba Students Nationalist Front, (YOSNF), Oodua Hunters Union, (OHUN) and 11 other groups.
The group also called on Yoruba people in the territories of the Hausa-Fulani North to be guided by a strong sense of history and the fact that they would not be spared by those who claim to be their hosts. "We advise them to begin to make alternative plans for the inevitable upheaval being promoted by the Fulani oligarchy.
"The North has always been the aggressor because of the region's loss of power and the unhidden desire to make Nigeria the irreversible extension of the Fulani emirate.
"What we see is violent conflict of civilisations which can only be resolved when each region go her own way. In the bid to keep Nigeria as one country, millions of people have been killed and the lives of children wasted, the future pauperized and the potentials of Yoruba young men and women bottled or chained with fetters of iron.
"Today, we make the historic declaration that Yoruba people are ready for our own Oduduwa Republic. We have watched events these past days. The cloud is getting thicker. The poisonous rain appear ready to fall. It is time for the Yoruba people to be ready to defend our homeland from being seized by local imperial elements and their collaborators. We assert Yoruba self-determination and sovereignty. We shall work for it. We will actualize it," ONAC said.
The groups said the Yoruba people have suffered unprecedented hardship in the form of human and material destruction since 1960 when the country attained independence.
"Our leaders beginning from Chief Obafemi Awolowo were jailed on trumped up charges. 28 leaders of Yoruba were imprisoned unjustly. Chief M.K.O Abiola was murdered. The industrial bases built by Awolowo were destroyed by the military rookies appointed to control the South West region, our culture destroyed and the future of our young people put asunder. Today, many Yoruba people have become scavengers across the world fleeing from a hostile, bloodletting and malicious country that hold no promise of good and abundant life for the long suffering and exhausted population.
The group stated further "We call on Yoruba people all over the world to prepare for a sovereign nation for the people of the South West. We are over 50 million and far more than the population of 140 countries in the world. Yoruba will be the third biggest nation in Africa and about the 28th biggest nation in the world. We are big and knowledgeable enough to be a sovereign nation. We assert the Yoruba self-determination without any further delay."
ONAC maintained that the position of Northern youths asking Igbo to quit the North, the outright demand for Arewa sovereignty by the Northern Elders Forum, (NEF), and the legitimate demand for Biafra by Igbo, the call for a Niger-Delta Republic; "It is time for the Yoruba people to stand for Oodua Republic without any further delay. Yoruba people this time will not support any attack on Self determination. We shall mobilise the masses and prevent Yoruba people from being used for any attack on the long suffering indigenous peoples of the South East and the South- South"
ONAC said the quit notice issued by the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, (AYCF) and the Northern Elders Forum, (NEF) was not against the Igbo alone but also against the Yoruba since Igbo is not written on the forehead of residents in the North.
ONAC concluded: "This is not the first time we have called for Oodua Republic. In April 2015, we organized a massive rally demanding for Oodua Republic. But today, this demand has become even more crucial than any other thing."
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PRESS RELEASE BY THE MIDDLE BELT YOUTH COUNCIL.
DATE: 7TH JUNE, 2017
We wish to express our profound gratitude to God for keeping us alive today. Middle Belt Youth Council is extremely concerned about the ongoing regional tension in Nigeria today and we want to make our position clear to the world. In the light of incessant threats to one Nigeria posed by killer-herdsmen, we want to call on good people of Middle Belt to first of all, support the Anti-grazing Bill. Grazing by Fulani herdsmen on our land has become the major cause of conflicts in our region therefore, we're calling for total ban on open grazing so as to save the lives of our people and their farmlands.
Secondly, it's no longer news that our country Nigeria is facing a daunting challenge of peace and unity but we want to assure the good citizens of Nigeria that we have been a peace-loving people and we'll continue to be. But, in an event one part of the country decides to go away as a separate entity, Middle Belt is also ready to make an independent statement. We want to clarify those who think that the Middle Belt is part of the North: God created everywhere and everyone and He gave it to whom He chooses and Middle Belt is a creation of God and not man (Usman bn Fodio). Therefore, we choose what to use our land for, how to run it and where we want to be. Middle Belt has been a home for the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, South-South and the South-West without any form of discrimination against anyone. We've accommodated every Nigerian for centuries now. We deserve respect and commendations. If the Arewa youths are sending away Igbos from their states, we in the Middle Belt are ready to offer them accommodation in our land (which is an inheritance from God and nobody will take it away from us) for them to continue with their life and businesses.
Southern Nigeria people should also know that 'Middle Belters' are not northerners and we can never be because we're not affiliated in terms of culture, language, education, economy, and general lifestyle. The Biafran struggle did not come as an accident but as a result of injustice and unfair treatment to regions, people or religion. Over the years, our federalism has been a fat lie that deprives political rights and freedom of some sections of the country while others benefit immensely from it. Middle Belt has been at the receiving end of this inequitable arrangement in which our people in Southern Kaduna, Southern Bauchi, Southern Borno, Southern Kebbi, Adamawa are under constant alienation and annihilation. Therefore, Middle Belt strongly stands for reconstruction of Nigeria not only restructuring.
We'll join hands with Southern Nigerian people to actualize it. In view of this press statement, we want to urge Middle Belters to remain resolute in making sure we protect our future against the claims by the Hausa/Fulani. More so, for want of peace and unity of dear country Nigeria, we call on Igbo nation to feel at home in the Middle Belt in an event they are sent away from the Arewa land.
God bless Nigeria! God bless the Middle Belt.
Signed: President, Emma Zopmal
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The Igbos Have Paid For Their Sins- Emir Sanusi

Emir Sanusi has led his voice to the ongoing controversy rising from the Kaduna declaration on the Igbos in the North
In a statement made available to Post-Nigeria, on Saturday, Sanusi went down memory lane, on how the Igbos carried out the first Military coup, that led to the death of top Northerners in the early 60s.
The statement reads:
The Igbo people of Nigeria have made a mark in the history of this nation. They led the first successful military coup which eliminated the Military and Political leaders of other regions while letting off Igbo leaders. Nwafor Orizu, then Senate President, in consultation with President Azikiwe, subverted the constitution and handed over power to Aguiyi-Ironsi.
Subsequent developments, including attempts at humiliating other peoples, led to the counter-coup and later the civil war. The Igbos themselves must acknowledge that they have a large part of the blame for shattering the unity of this country.
Having said that, this nation must realise that Igbos have more than paid for their foolishness. They have been defeated in war, rendered paupers by monetary policy fiat, their properties declared abandoned and confiscated, kept out of strategic public sector appointments and deprived of public services. The rest of the country forced them to remain in Nigeria and has continued to deny them equity.
The Northern Bourgeoisie and the Yoruba Bourgeoisie have conspired to keep the Igbo out of the scheme of things. In the recent transition when the Igbo solidly supported the PDP in the hope of an Ekwueme presidency, the North and South- West treated this as a Biafra agenda. Every rule set for the primaries, every gentleman´s agreement was set aside to ensure that Obasanjo, not Ekwueme emerged as the candidate. Things went as far as getting the Federal Government to hurriedly gazette a pardon. Now, with this government, the marginalistion of the Igbo is more complete than ever before. The Igbos have taken all these quietly because, they reason, they brought it upon themselves. But the nation is sitting on a time-bomb.
After the First World War, the victors treated Germany with the same contempt Nigeria is treating Igbos. Two decades later, there was a Second World War, far costlier than the first.
Germany was again defeated, but this time, they won a more honourable peace. Our present political leaders have no sense of History. There is a new Igbo man, who was not born in 1966 and neither knows nor cares about Nzeogwu and Ojukwu.
There are Igbo men on the street who were never Biafrans. They were born Nigerians, are Nigerians, but suffer because of actions of earlier generations. They will soon decide that it is better to fight their own war, and may be find an honourable peace, than to remain in this contemptible state in perpetuity.
The Northern Bourgeoisie and the Yoruba Bourgeoisie have exacted their pound of flesh from the Igbos. For one Sardauna, one Tafawa Balewa, one Akintola and one Okotie- Eboh, hundreds of thousands have died and suffered.
If this issue is not addressed immediately, no conference will solve Nigeria´s problems.
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THE YOUTHS OF ODUDUWA REPUBLIC LAGOS DECLARATION – 10TH JUNE 2017
In view of recent events in the political space called Nigeria, we, the youths of Oduduwa republic occupying the geographical space called South West of Nigeria hereby categorically state without any reservation that we are sick and tired of the generational threats of the Igbo extraction of this forced union, to go their separate ways in what they call Biafra.
In this threat we were born, in this threat we’ve lived our lives and if care is not taken, in this same threat our children will grow up and give birth to their own children. It is unfortunate that our fathers do not realize the enormous damage they do to our personalities and confidence by keeping quiet all these years making us look like the Igbos are doing us a favour by cohabiting with us, occupying our space, enjoying our resources and even to the point of dominating our political arena.
OUR GENERATION MUST END THIS NONSENSE.
Without wasting time in going to the details of the issues, as the whole world knows too well where we are coming from, where we are and where we are likely to end up, we wish to make it abundantly clear that we shall no longer tolerate the madness of the Igbo region intimidating, harassing and defrauding the Yoruba nation with their empty calls for Biafra.
As from today, the 7th day of June 2017, any mention of Biafra again on our soil will automatically, without recourse to any other warning, earn the Igbos an eviction notice from all of the six states that form ODUDUWA REPUBLIC namely, for the avoidance of doubts, Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ondo and Ekiti.
We shall within three months of such act of agitation for Biafra do everything possible to chase the Igbos out of our land so we all can leave in peace and regain our dignity as human race. If you are my wife or my husband and every morning you wake up, you threaten to divorce me, one day, no matter how gentle and loving I am, I will get tired of your threats and accept your proposal, that exactly is the stage we are now. But note that you cannot divorce me and still insist you want to live in my house or keep occupying my space.
You cannot divorce me and still insist on sleeping with me forever, it cannot just work. You divorce me, you go your way and allow somebody else who values me, who will not be abusing and cursing me everyday of my life to move in and occupy the space. It’s just common sense. It should be noted that we are not by this declaration asking the Igbos to leave our space, however, the choice is theirs.
If you want to live within the ODUDUWA REPUBLIC, you must henceforth shut up, shut down your agitation for Biafra, respect us as a people, your loving and accommodating hosts and choose to live in peace with us, otherwise, any three months from the time you carry out any Biafra activity again, we will make sure you vacate our land.
The fact that our fathers have tolerated this nonsense for ages does not make all of us stupid, Oduduwa lineage is never a cowardly race, we only don’t react intuitively, even the Igbo race should know by now that everyone has been pushed to the wall and if you think this is an empty threat, we dare you to dare us.
We are using this medium also to call on all Nigerian citizens of Yoruba extraction living, working or sojourning in any part of the Southern region of the Nigeria to, as a matter of urgency, begin to make a relocation plan.
Home is home, nowhere else is better than home. Please do not allow this time bomb to catch you unawares.
Most of the people parading themselves as Yoruba leaders will not take any proactive steps now because their children and family members are not in any of those areas, they are rather scattered all over the US and Europe so be careful in listening to their assurances of nothing will happen. Your destiny is in your hands, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere else but your life first.
In conclusion, we call on all political, social and religious leaders in Nigeria to prevail on the Igbos to either stop talking about Biafra or immediately begin to relocate to their country as we will not be held responsible for the consequences of their action or inaction henceforth. This declaration goes for any tribe, region or group of people that cannot stand our gut on our soil.
A word is enough for the wise...
Long Live Oduduwa Republic
ODUDUWA A GBE WA O.
Signed
The Secretary General
THE YOUTHS OF ODUDUWA REPUBLIC
(YOR)
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