Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, the main Igbo socio-cultural body, has denounced Northern elders’ unwillingness to speak out against the claimed persistent marginalization of Igbo people.
The organisation slammed President Muhammadu Buhari’s dot-in-a-circle remark directed against Igbo people in a statement issued by its Secretary-General, Okechukwu Isiguzoro, on Tuesday.
Last Thursday, Buhari claimed that his administration would mobilize the military and police to pursue the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), who were accused of disrupting the peace in the region.
IPOB, he claimed, is “simply like a dot in a circle,” with nowhere to turn. They are dispersed over the world, with interests and properties in various locations.
“They don’t know what they are doing. How we will handle them is to mobilise the police and the military to go after them.”
Buhari also lambasted people clamoring for the Biafra and Oduduwa republics’ statehood, calling them foolish.
However, Ohanaeze reacted angrily, describing the President’s remark as “disastrous,” adding that “no damage control or image laundering” will be enough to make up for “this collective assault on Ndigbo.”
According to the group, Northern leaders’ silence demonstrates that they are satisfied with President Buhari’s stand on Southeastern Nigeria.
Isiguzoro noted that Igbo people are emergency experts in all situations and will be a dot in the circle that will swallow nepotistic anarchists and anti-Igbo exponents.
The statement read, “Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide had charged the leadership of the North to speak out against discrimination against Igbos and divisiveness being created by disastrous declarations of President Muhammadu Buhari describing how the southeast is landlocked and no damage control or image laundering will assuage this collective assault on Ndigbo.
“It appears that there are chains of crafted skirmish programmed to either aggravate the traumas of Ndigbo or remind them of the sordid past a few years ago, and with ‘a dot in a circle’ slogan that was used to pulverize Igbos during the Biafra war that left 3 million people dead, especially women and children. Right now in 160 days, 513 Igbos had been killed, 2,436 arrested and 854 missing in the ongoing ‘imported’ insecurity challenges in the southeast.
“The ‘dot in the circle’ is a new signal to point out that Ndigbo are surrounded or should be taught in the language they should understand, but the fact remains that, the silence of Northern leaders shows that they are happy over the position of President Buhari on Southeastern Nigeria. We have seen the direction of events and Igbos are not noisy anymore, we are emergency experts in all situations, ‘a dot in a circle’ remains the Bermuda triangular point that will swallow nepotistic anarchists and anti-Igbo exponents.”
