Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja
The Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) has lamented that the attacks allegedly carried out by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the South-east region was exaggerated by the Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF) just to deny the Igbo people the presidency in 2023.
The NEF had recently frowned at the alleged attacks carried out by IPOB in the region, stressing that Nigerians are paying the price of failure of two sets of leaders, as it added that at the national level, “the administration appears to have lost the capacity to halt the gradual descent of the country into anarchy, while political leaders in the South-east region appear to have submitted to violence and terror of IPOB and ESN.”
However, the National Chairman ZLP, Chief Dan Nwanyanwu, in a chat with journalists yesterday in Abuja, noted that the legitimate agitation for an equitable and fair society in Nigeria and the anger against marginalisation against the Igbo people can never be resolved through violence.
Nwanyanwu noted that the Igbo cannot cut their noses to spite their faces, saying it would be embarrassing, counterproductive and primitive to do that.
He stated: “The utterances of supposed prominent Nigerians in high places, including misguided leaders of pseudo organizsations purporting to speak for the North, have ceased every opportunity to exaggerate the direction of the attack in the Southeast, and follow up such deliberate incitement to threaten death and genocide on Igbo people all over the country. This is being intensified as we approach 2023.
“Some of these so-called leaders are uncomfortable with what has become a near national consensus that equity, justice and fair play demand that the presidential slot for 2023 should be reserved for the people of the Southeast geo-political zone of Nigeria as has been done since 1999 till date, where rotation between the North and the South has become a convention of our national power rotation.”
Nwanyanwu stressed that the genocide attitude of some of the security agencies, who conducted themselves as though they were unleashed on the people of the South-east for annihilation, is highly provocative, condemnable and atrocious.
He noted that there is no justification in any civilised society for policemen and soldiers to round up unarmed and innocent young men and women for slaughter.
The ZLP warned that: It is important to caution that there is a limit to which these genocidal conducts can be endured. It is, therefore, advised to rein these misguided security agents and if possible withdraw them and deploy them to the various war fronts in various parts of the North where their services are more needed and where they can prove their bravery in the execution of war.”
