Ohanaeze Ndigbo: Nobody can declare a state of emergency

The apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo worldwide, has found Abubakar Malami threat to declare a state of emergency in Anambra State because of the recent insecurity in the state embarrassing and degrading.

Ohanaeze Ndigbo spokesman, Alex Ogbonnia, who stated this while reacting to the Attorney General and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami’s insinuation that the Federal Government will declare a state of emergency in Anambra State because of recent killings, said that what is happening in northern states was much more and the Federal Government had not declared a state of emergency there.

Ohanaeze said though there was crisis of insecurity in the South East, instead of the Justice Minister to proffer how the security operatives could counter it and stop the situation, he was contemplating state of emergency, describing it as “funny and embarrassing to Ndigbo.”

“Looking at it from genuine point of view, you will see that we have had more killings in Borno, Yobe, Plateau, Benue, Katsina, Niger and even in Kaduna State. He will be there they count their killings in scores and in hundreds, this one in Anambra is just a few persons and somebody is contemplating state of emergency. When they were being killed in hundreds yet elections were held in all those states and now we have a few killings you are contemplating state of emergency.

“Dr. Akunyili was killed about five days ago and as first step you are talking of an emergency. This one, instead of thinking of how to contain and counter such gruesome killings, the first suggestion that come from an Attorney General is State of emergency. Above all Ohanaeze had already known even before now that we are in doubt if some of the crimes being committed here, is our boys really have the strategic capacity to commit them.
“Like going to police station discharge all the people in the station and burn it, going to prison yard discharge over 1,000 inmates and no persons caught. Some of these things we begin to wonder whether our people have the strategic capacity to commit these crimes and go undetected.

“So this development is very strange and is coming at a point where every person is thinking that is time for Igbo to produce president of Nigeria. We are looking at that people are trying to disarticulate the South East, create a false impression that they are not in unity, they are ungovernable, they are in crisis and to that extent they cannot produce a president for Nigeria. All these things we are thinking about but we will disappoint them,” Ogbonnia said.

Ohanaeze spokesman disclosed that the South East leaders had devised means to counter the impression, adding, “We have appealed to our Archbishops and Bishops and traditional rulers, and Town Union President Generals to start engaging the youth so that we will disappoint them by making sure that Anambra and other states become calm. And being calm, we will disappoint them by holding election peacefully in Anambra.”

So those who say that they want to make South East ungovernable will soon be disappointed, “because we are wiser.”

He revealed that some arrests that have been made on the killings in the region, revealed that “some of them are not from Igbo land, some came from Igala, some came from Edo, they were hired people. So we cannot allow state of emergency in Anambra because Onitsha is the economic hub of Igbo land, in fact whoever is thinking of state of emergency in Anambra should go and have a rethink because it is not possible and we can’t allow it.”

Ohanaeze Ndigbo is an apex Igbo socio-cultural group in Nigeria. The group represents all Igbo communities within and outside Nigeria. Igbos by census, represent one of the three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria. Although the group is not a political party, part of its objectives of creation is to foster unity among its members in order to better allow them to be representative within the political scenario of Nigeria.