The apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, said there is no iota of truth in a “spurious news item” alleging that it had chosen a former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, to spearhead the campaign for the emergence of a President of Igbo extraction in 2023.
It also said that it is “equally mendacious” for the report to allege that Ohanaeze leadership is planning to have an interface with some prominent political figures in the country towards achieving the same objective.
National Publicity Secretary, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Prince Uche Achi-Okpaga, said in a statement on Wednesday that “Ohanaeze Ndigbo, therefore, distances itself from the infantile hallucinations of the group as it does not exist. The apex Igbo group calls on the press and members of the public to desist from using the official logo of Ohanaeze Ndigbo of a red cap and a feather when writing about or referring to the errant group as it is a great disservice to Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, so that when Ohanaeze Ndigbo speaks people will know it has spoken.
According to the statement, “Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide hereby informs the general public that at no time were the aforementioned situations ever contemplated or was there any meeting at which they were tabled for consideration, let alone any action being taken or a press statement issued on that.
“The purported actions exist only in the imagination of the miscreants and enemies of the Igbo nation who are the purveyors of the unfortunate concoctions. Ohanaeze Ndigbo reiterates that there is no organisation as Ohanaeze Youth Council recognized by Ndigbo and that the misguided so-called leader of the group, Okechukwu Isiguzoro, is a warped, egocentric and power-hungry mind who obviously is living in an incontrovertible state of mental delusion.
“If nothing else raises doubts about his bifurcated mind, how come not long ago he was the “president” of the group but suddenly metamorphosis to its ” president general”. Ohanaeze Ndigbo regrets the unpatriotic acts of some Igbo politicians sponsoring these equally unpatriotic irredentists shamelessly flying the kite for them towards 2023.
“It states that if it is the wish of God that a president of Igbo stock shall emerge in 2023, it will not be midwifed by an inconsequential group whose only mission and preoccupation is personal aggrandizement and not the collective interest and aspiration of Ndigbo.
“Ohanaeze Ndigbo, once more, calls on prominent Igbo sons and daughters to stand up and call these recalcitrant boys to order, because it could have gone to court to stop their irreverent behaviour but for the same reason it refused to face other Igbo recalcitrant groups headlong in its mild skirmishes with them—-a father does not quarrel with his children in the public.