Nigerian Government and Politics from the colonial era to political independence and till date is replete with cases of marginalization, brutality and massacre of the Igbo race. This maltreatment came to a head after the assassination and overthrow of Military Head of State, Gen. JTU Aguiyi Ironsi on 29th July, 1966 mainly by soldiers of Northern Nigeria extraction, as Northerners(both soldiers and civilians) began the killing of Igbo civilians and soldiers resident in the North and Western Nigeria in large numbers.
Several conferences were held in and outside Nigeria to address the masscre of the Igbos in Nigeria, but they all failed. The last straw that broke the Camel's back was the famous Aburi Conference in Ghana which the then Federal Government under Gen. Yakubu Gowon refused to implement and which led to Gen. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu who was military administrator of Eastern Region to declare the region a sovereign state with the title, "Republic of Biafra" on 30th May, 1967.
This declaration resulted in thirteen months civil war during which many Igbos were killed, including our best brains like Christopher Okigbo. Igbo property were also destroyed in the East. Outside the East, Igbo property were declared "abandoned property" and taken over by the people of the area where the property were located.
After the war, Gen. Gowon came up with what was popularly known as the three "Rs"; reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction. These were aside his declaration of "no victor, no vanquished" when the war formally ended on 15th January, 1979. But none of these approaches could give the Igbos a sense of belonging that one Nigeria truly existed. This was equally worsened by an unimaginable scale of marginalization of the Igbos in virtually everything, including the leadership of Nigeria since the war ended.
Throughout the second republic, no Igbo smelt the Nigerian presidency. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who made attempts under the platform of the defunct Nigeria Peoples Party, NPP failed till he bowed out. Dr. Alex Ekwueme who came closer played second fiddle to Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the NPN-National Party of Nigeria from Sokoto State. The military regimes that followed had no Igbo as head of state.
With the return of democracy on 29th May, 1999, Igbos were still reminded that they were conquered people by the powers that be in PDP. That was how Dr. Alex Ekwueme, a founding father of the party was denied the presidency, while Obasanjo, a Yoruba man who had just been released from prison was given the ticket of the PDP for the presidential election of 1999. Even our own Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu was tricked into stepping aside for Chief Olu Falae, another Yoruba man under the then AD/ANPP alliance. The result was that both PDP and AD/ANPP alliance zoned the Presidency to the South West; only these three political parties were in existence at the time.
At the end of the presidential election, Chief Obasanjo of the PDP won and ruled Nigeria for eight years. In 2007, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar' Adua from the North West succeeded Obasanjo. When Yar' Adua died in 2009 the then Vice President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan from the South South succeeded him constitutionally. Dr. Jonathan contested the 2011 presidential election and won. He was however defeated in 2015 by President Mohammadu Buhari of the APC from North West. In 2019, the PDP featured Alhaji Atiku Abubakar from the Northeast as its presidential flagbearer; it was also then that the Igbo was considered for Vice Presidential slot in the person of Mr. Peter Obi, former Governor of Anambra State who had defected from APGA to PDP during Jonathan's administration inspite of serving as two terms governor of Anambra State under the platform of APGA.
President Buhari defeated Atiku in the 2019 presidential election and the APC has continued as the ruling party in Nigeria till date
Within these democratic periods from 1999 till date, two seccessionists' groups had emerged from the South East geopolitical zone. One was under Obasanjo's administration known as MASSOB-Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra led by Ralph Uwazuruike and the most recent which is more troublesome to the point that it had been declared a terrorist organization and proscribed by the Federal Government is IPOB-indigenous People Of Biafra led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
These groups and their members and indeed almost all Igbos at home and in diaspora do not believe in one Nigeria because of the glaring marginalization, deprivation, denials and genocide which the Igbos had suffered and are still suffering in Nigeria.
Therefore, it becomes imperative that an Igbo man or woman as President of Nigeria is the solution to Igbo seccessionists agitations in Nigeria and which will ultimately guarantee one Nigeria.
It is said that a problem that had been identified is already half solved. This is why His Excellency, Engr. Dr. David Nweze Umahi, fnse, fnate, the Governor of Ebonyi State and the chairman of Southeast Governors' Forum identified the bane of one Nigeria as the total relegation of the Igbo race to the background in the comity of Nigeria particularly as it concerns the presidency and declared that time has come for a national rebirth; time has come for Nigeria to be truly one with an Igbo man or woman as President of the country. It is only then that we can achieve true reconciliation in Nigeria and only then can the wounds of the past and present could be permanently healed.
Therefore, let's join Governor Umahi en-masse in the clamour for a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction regardless of whether we are Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa/Fulani or other ethnic groups in Nigeria because one Nigeria can only become a reality with an Igbo man or woman as President.
APC.
Umahi is the Answer
Ogbuatu Simbad
State Publicity Secretary APC, Ebonyi State
Publisher: Don Martyn L.O Nwosu
Ikeduru APC Media Hub
08032950897
Ikeduruapcmediahub@gmail.com
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