The South-East zonal chapter of the All Progressives Congress on Sunday, August 23, said the Igbo leaders currently opposed to probing the immediate past president Goodluck Jonathan are speaking blasphemy against the traditions of the Igbos.
Goodluck Jonathan
The party said the Igbo leaders who are supporting the former president have flouted the traditional admonition which forbade Igbos from identifying with thieves or alleged thieves.
According to Vanguard, several Igbo leaders including Prof Ben Nwabueze, chairman of the Igbo Leaders of Thought, and the secretary-general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Joe Nwaorgu, had in recent times faulted President Muhammadu Buhari’s planned probe of the immediate past administration.
The Igbo leaders stressed that limiting the probe to Jonathan’s government was an indication that Buhari was being influenced in his anti-graft campaign.
However, the South-East APC in a statement by its spokesman, Osita Okechukwu told the concerned Igbo leaders to stop desecrating Igbo tradition by supporting Jonathan.
The spokesman wondered why Jonathan’s Ijaw kinsmen have not been the ones defending him and why the Igbo leaders must be the ones to do the defence.
Okechukwu said: “Our worry is that the timeless Igbo tradition, which admonishes us not to steal, and not to defend nor associate with rogues or even alleged rogues is being flagrantly breached by prominent Igbo sons, crying more than Ijaw sons and daughters.
“We are yet to locate any sentence where any of them, even our revered icon, erudite and constitutional lawyer, Professor Ben Nwabueze, in any form denied the mindless, pervasive and unbridled corruption which governed ex-president Jonathan’s regime. We stand to be corrected. Then why splash us with the mud?” he asked.
Condemning the argument by the scribe of Ohaneze Ndigbo that Buhari should extend the probe to the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo on the one hand, Okechukwu on another hand accused Nwaorgu of deliberately blocking a planned meeting between Buhari and the Igbo group before the elections. He said that Buhari had conveyed his request for the meeting, where he intended to chart the way forward with Ndigbo.
The spokesman said: “May we appeal to Chief Joe Nwaorgu and his cohorts, if actually the interest of Ndigbo is what they are fighting for, to climb down from their high horses, drop their ancient stereotypes and stop the hate narratives and embrace the true position that Ndigbo stands to gain more from President Buhari’s regime, if ever we gained from our massive support to former president Jonathan.
“Failing which, Chief Joe Nwaorgu and his cohorts, may wittingly or unwittingly confirm the allegation that they – Ndigbo ultra-defenders of Jonathan – were beneficiaries of presidential campaign slush funds,” Okechukwu added.
The APC said in the statement that Ndigbo like all hard working groups in the country, will gain more from Buhari’s administration than Jonathan’s, and that they are more likely to realise their wish to have one of their own as president of the country through the president.
He said: “The Igbo ethnic merchants and gossip-terrorists who bandy all manner of conspiracy hate theories against President Buhari must come to terms that eight-year tenure of the man of uncommon integrity is the surest route to actualisation of president of Igbo extraction, given the zoning convention.”
Meanwhile, fresh facts from a Lagos-based group have revealed that some boys loyal to ex-president, and some caucus members of the APC are responsible for the witch-hunt of Rotimi Amaechi, a former governor of Rivers state.
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