Von boss Osita Okechukwu asks Ndigbo to end agitation as president will be Igbo in 2023

VOICE of Nigeria (Von) director-general Osita Okechukwu has called on Biafran separatists to abandon their plans for secession adding that the southeast will produce the next president in 2013 when the presidency will revert to Ndigbo.

 

Over the last year, several Igbo groups led by the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (Massob) and the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (Ipob) have been campaigning for the recreation of the defunct Biafran republic. Their campaign has resonated with Igbo youths who feel alienated and as such, there have been numerous large demonstrations held across the southeast.

 

Recently appointed to his position, Mr Okechukwu, an Igbo himself, condemned the agitation, arguing that the southeast geo-political zone would have the chance to produce the president if it supports the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. He subsequently asked all pro-Biafra agitators to stop their agitation for sovereign state of Biafra and support President Buhari in the overall interest of the people of the zone.

 

Speaking at his hometown, Eke in Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State during the Egwu Abia Festival, Mr Okechukwu said the Buhari administration will soon commence work on the Second Niger Bridge, as well as the Enugu-Onitsha and Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressways, which were captured in the 2016 budget. He called on Ipob and Massob to sheathe their swords because their agitation was not in the interest of Ndigbo who are not only doing well in all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria but have the high chance to produce Nigerian president of Igbo extraction in 2023.

 

Mr Okechukwu agreed that the constitution of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has no provision for rotation or zoning but added that convention gives Ndigbo a good chance if they support President Buhari till 2013. He added that as the southwest and south-south have each produced a president, so the next time the presidency comes to the south, it will be the turn of Igboland.

 

“In the public domain, there is the law, with its legal teeth and the convention with its moral weight. If Ndigbo collectively support the Buhari administration, we stand to gain as most of the dilapidated roads, the Second Niger Bridge and Enugu Coal will be fixed, so I therefore plead with the boys agitating for Biafra to consider the overall interest of Ndigbo who are doing relatively well in all nooks and crannies of Nigeria.

 

“Therefore, if we support Buhari, nothing will stop us from harvesting the moral weight of zoning convention, since equity and justice is on our side. For our brothers of the southwest and south-south have had their turns since our return to democracy in 1999,” Mr Okechukwu added.