From Magnus Eze, Enugu
Ohanaeze Ndigbo has declared that the 2023 polls were important to the Igbo.
It blamed the renewed insecurity in the region, especially attacks on facilities of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on political interests from outside the zone.
Reacting to the vandalism of INEC offices in the region, National Publicity Secretary of the group, Dr. Alex Ogbonnia, told Daily Sun that some people he did not name were behind the ‘despicable act’ to discourage or frustrate elections in the area next year.
He said Nigeria had in the past missed opportunities of electing the best candidate to pilot its affairs.
Ogbonnia, who described the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi, as the option for Nigerians in next year’s presidential election, alleged that renewed insecurity in the South East was aimed at frustrating him in his home base.
“People are sponsoring the insecurity externally. For them, the more disarticulated and disorganised the people of South East are, the happier they feel and better prepared they are in planning to win elections. So, these are issues causing this problem, but more importantly, we in the South East will continue to work hard to make sure that all these vandalism of INEC offices should stop because this election is very important to us. It is very important to us because of the fact that somebody from this part of the world is coming to serve, not only Nigeria but Africa and the world.
“It is known, very clear, if you follow the political history of Nigeria, you’ll discover that from the beginning, Azikiwe was by far the best of aspirants, right from 1959-1960, even in 1979, you see people like Alex Ekwueme with doctorate degree and all that, yet he couldn’t make it. And K.O. Mbadiwe and the rest of them. Then if you come back to when Ekwueme contested in 1999, he was the most qualified. If you follow this history and trend, you see that Nigeria has been missing it because the right persons have not been allowed to be there. This is an opportunity for the right person to be there in the person of Peter Obi. So every hand must be on deck.”
Ohanaeze, therefore, compelling all town union presidents to hold meetings regarding security in the South East to ensure that the zone would be calm and that this year’s election holds.
“And we want to activate all the local security operatives to ensure that all these external aggressors will be checkmated,” Ogbonnia said.