CITIZENS COMPASS—The apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, on Sunday, demanded an end to the #IgboMustGo slogan currently trending particularly in Lagos State.
The group condemned various forms of attack, including ethnic slurs, against the Igbo.
It disclosed this in a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Dr. Chiedozie Ogbonnia, describing the #IgboMustGo slogan as hate speech.
The Apex body described the slogan as an “orchestrated ethnic profiling, hate speech, incendiary and inflammatory rhetoric and outright demolition of Igbo properties and liquidation of their sources of income in Lagos State since a few years now.”
“It is certain that such reckless, provocative, divisive, instigative and inflammatory dispositions towards the Igbos in Lagos State, will remain unabated, except of course, there are manifest consequences for such vexatious, unscrupulous loose-cannons and hate-mongers,” it said.
“In June 2023, a few days before the March 18, 2023 governorship elections, a video went viral on social media showing Alhaji Musiliu Akinsanya, commonly known as ‘MC Oluomo’, where he issued a threat to the Igbo residents of Lagos to ‘either vote for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) or stay at home’.
“Based on the Oluoma doltish tantrums, political thugs went on the rampage carrying out civil-war-era-style eye tests to determine who was an Igbo and who was not. According to the report, ‘those they deemed to be Igbo were violently deprived of their rights to vote’. In some cases, people of other ethnic groups who did not pass the eye tests were also beaten and forced out of polling units.
“Earlier in 2015, the Oba of Lagos, Alhaji Rilwan Akiolu had issued a threat to the Igbo living in Lagos State ‘to either vote for the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode, or else they will die in the lagoon’.”
“When many well-meaning Nigerians, including Mr. Festus Keyamo, cautioned Onanuga on the ignoble path he had chosen for himself, he was quoted to have stated: ‘I owe no one apology for ethnic slur against the Igbo.’”
Ohanaeze also recalled how some thugs allegedly set ablaze the Igbo-majority Akere Spare Parts Market on March 8, 2023.
“The #IgboMustGo slogan is not only reckless and divisive but an attempt to sow a seed of discord between the Yoruba in the South-west and other tribes, especially those who have made Lagos their permanent place of abode.”
“When it mattered most, it was Obasanjo who lent full weight that the Presidency of Nigeria should go to the South-East of Nigeria in 2023. It was Obasanjo who posited that unless ‘Nigeria throws its doors open to merit, competence and full inclusion of the Igbo in national affairs, the country will continue to flounder and grope in the dark.
“The Obasanjo presidency was very blind to ethnicity. The above qualities and more stand Chief Olusegun Obasanjo out as the conscience of the nation.”
