Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe, PhD, DD
September 06, 2024
True Sons of Oduduwa know that their true enemies are not the Igbo. Their real enemies are those parading today as their devious political leaders collaborating with Muslim Fulani oligarchy to enslave the Nigerian masses. Their enemies are not the Igbo who come to build rather than to destroy and kill. The fact is, those Igbo and Yoruba elements who drum cross-Igbo-Yoruba hatred are either uneducated, semi-educated or are well-educated but historically bankrupt.
As an Igbo by ethnic definition and Nigerian by nationalistic imprints, I have therefore always regarded such senseless and often orchestrated outbursts and occasional melodramatic conflicts as symptoms of sensual political stupidity borne out of siege political mentality on both sides of the ethnic divides.
It is this siege political mentality that led the Eleko of Eko, Oba Rilwan Akiolu to descend from the pinnacle of his royal dignity to the abyss of ignominious ethnic bigotry to threaten drowning any Igbo who failed to vote for his anointed Lagos State APC Governorship Candidate in 2015, the now abandoned Akinwunmi Ambode.
It is this siege political mentality that drives the anti-Igbo mentality Bola Ahmed Tinubu, his wife Remi Tinubu and Alhaji Bayo Onanuga. These are people, including President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who have questionable identity syndrome within the context of Yoruba ethnic belongingness, and as such always seek easy scape-goats to vent their symptomatic psychosomatic ethnic inferiority complex.
In April 2017 Oba Rilwan Akiolu, the Eleko of Eko snubbed the Ooni of Ife and King of Kings of Yorubaland Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi in a public function. His reason was that he owes allegiance to the Oba of Benin and not the Ooni of Ife.
Oba Rilwan Akiolu might claim to be Yoruba today through Benin conquest theory, but in truth he is of Nupe origin. He was born out of marriage by a Nupe trader in Idumota before his mother got married to the man who subsequently adopted him as his son. This explains why a member of the Lagos royal family Musliu Anibaba never accepted him as a rightful Oba of Lagos. It further explains why his royal staff of office was taken away by Lagos mobs. Oba Akiolu as reported by Seun Opejobi on the May 3, 2017 issue of the Daily Post stated that Lagos does not belong to Yoruba people.
Alhaji Yekini Amoda Ogunlere, a. k. a Bobo Chicago turned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is the same man whose great grandfather migrated from Borgu in the present Niger State to Iragbiji in Osun State; and who was privileged to associate with the family of Madam Tinubu through his mother who served the latter as a housemaid. Will it surprise Nigerians that when President Tinubu’s real mother died in Iragbiji he refused to attend the funeral in order to hide his true ancestry? But he cannot deny that the last Osun State Governor Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola from Iragbiji is his nephew—the son of his senior sister?
Bayo Onanuga as someone with questionable Yoruba identity should be a shameless man indeed for questioning the right of the Igbo in Lagos State to vote for their preferred candidates, a State he is as much a stranger as any Igbo man.
Bayo Onanuga should have been advised to stay off Igbo matters in Lagos State if he knew his polluted Nupe ancestry is on public domain. A man whose Nupe slave great grandfather miraculously escaped the notorious 1892 Ijebu mass slave sacrifices that saw over 200 slaves slaughtered in the bid to defeat the invading British forces and, was subsequently rescued and adopted by Otunba Biodun Onanuga’s great grandfather, should be ashamed to call himself a bona fide Yoruba man, much more questioning Igbo presence in Lagos State.
The question every reasonable Igbo with a strong sense of history and mutual ethnic conviviality with the Yoruba should ask himself is do these anti-Igbo elements of questionable Yoruba origin represent collective Yoruba opinion about the Igbo? The answer is no.
If therefore we accept that the likes of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, his wife Remi Tinubu, Oba Rilwan Akiolu and Alhaji Bayo Onanuga represent isolated cases of political insanity founded on paranoiac syndrome of questionable ethnic identity, then any Igbo who drums any form of support for the insane Canada-based Igbo woman in her insane threat against the Edo and Yoruba people is equally suffering from the same paranoiac syndrome of questionable ethnic identity and cataclysmic bigotry.
When any Igbo declares every Yoruba as his enemy, is he not declaring the children of the former Governor of Ondo State Rotimi Akeredolu who married an Igbo woman and the current Governor of Osun State, Senator Ademola Adeleke who is the son of an Igbo woman their enemy too? When any Igbo declares every Edo as his enemy, is he not declaring Iyom Josephine Anenih, including her Edo-born children their enemies?
Are those Igbo hailing the treacherous woman called Amaka Patience Sunnberger not by the same token calling the pop music maestro Davido Adeleke whose grandmother is not only Igbo but has an Igbo wife their enemy? Does the same blanket stigmatization of the Yoruba also apply to the former Lagos State Labour Party Governorship candidate Gbadebo Patrick Rhodes-Vivour whose mother is Igbo and father Yoruba?
There should therefore be a limit to the dastard collectivization of guilt against an ethnic group for the actions of the insane few. Indeed such action amounts to somebody throwing a stone into the crowded market, which could result to his kinsman being the victim. The child of an Igbo woman (Nwadiana) is as sacred to the ancestors of Igboland as his mother. So threating or harming such a person is as sacrilegious as doing same to his mother.
As an Igbo from Delta State, I am sentimentally attached to both Yoruba and Edo ethnic nations on historical, ideological, kinship and personal grounds. By ideological orientation, I am an unrepentant Awoist and thus I consider every Yoruba or Edo man who shares similar views with me as my political brother beyond ethnic divides.
As an Igbo from Delta State, I was part of the Western Region before Midwest Region and the present Delta State. I therefore consider Ibadan as my traditional political Capital, just as Enugu is to the present Southeast States, including Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and, Cross River. So I will not for any reason of despicable ethnic bigotry be a part of any war against the Yoruba and Edo people. And I know my Anioma people from Delta and Edo States will agree with me; including many reasonable Igbo people from the Southeast and South-South, particularly my Nnewi kinsmen.
We should agree that the on-going crisis if not a devious calculated attempt by President Tinubu to distract Nigerians from their on-going state of sufferings, is a case of insane ethnic bigotry borne out of decrepit sense of history and political foolhardiness. It is indeed a case of, to borrow the words of Herbert Butterfield:
“While there is battle and hatred men have eyes for nothing save the fact that the enemy is the cause of all the troubles; but long, long afterwards, when all passion has been spent, the historian often sees that it was a conflict between one half-right that was perhaps too proud; and behind even this he discerns that it was a terrible predicament, which had the effect of putting men so at cross-purposes with one another.”
During the 1966 pogrom against the Igbo in Northern Nigeria, my father was lucky to escape from the mob in Bauchi and consequently fled into the bush. After one week of loneliness and hunger in the caves he decided to go back to the city resigning to death. He eventually entered the city around 2 am and found his way to the residence of his Yoruba friend.
When he knocked on the door and identified himself as Lawrence Nwankwo, his friend had every sense of belief that his Igbo friend was already dead as the news had carried it, and thus refused to open the door, informing him that the Lawrence he knew was already dead. After several fruitless attempts to convince his friend that he was not dead, he decided to sleep on the table outside the house.
Early in the morning when his friend opened his door, he saw my father dozing on the table outside. He shouted, Lawrence so you are alive! Immediately he took my father inside the house and informed him he was doing it at the risk of his life because the order was that anybody found hiding any Igbo man would be killed. He however informed my father that already some survivors were being gathered at the Central Police Station for safety and that he would do all he could to safely take him them.
My father took his bath and was provided breakfast. He was thereafter concealed at the back-seat of his friend’s car covered as a Muslim woman and driven to Bauchi Police Station, where he joined the throng of Igbo people including the wounded. From that point he was eventually airlifted to Enugu, from where he found his way to our hometown.
As an Igbo of Delta State origin, our people since pre-colonial times have lived together peacefully with both the Yoruba and Edo with cross ancestral origins in many instances. Among those who call themselves Delta Igbo today we have six pre-colonial Yoruba towns that claim Igbo identity, whose oral traditional accounts tell us how their ancestors migrated from the present Ondo and Osun States some centuries ago. They still their Yoruba language which we call Olukwuni in our dialect alongside Igbo bearing mixed Igbo and Yoruba names.
As an Igbo of Delta State origin, I have many blood relations among the Yoruba ethnic groups. My mother’s younger sister Auntie Mrs. Victoria Nkeadi Bolaji is married to an Ogbomosho man with whom she lives together today at Ogbomosho, Oyo State with adult children. In my Ibusa hometown alone there are more than thirty families with cross-Igbo-Yoruba marriages. And can any sane person among both the Igbo and Yoruba expect me to join this contemptible dance of ethnic war being drummed by to ridiculous insane people?
As an Igbo of Delta State origin, there are many Edo and Yoruba people whose actions are instrumental to my being alive today in the course of my present struggles, and one stupid Igbo woman who is safely tucked away in Canada through her paranoiac political syndrome and insane utterances wants me to draw ethnic battle lines against Edo and Yoruba people?
Just a brief recount: The Benin-born legal luminary Pa Solomon Asemota, SAN, whole heartedly took over my court case against the Federal Government over the still on-going religious persecutions against Christians in 2016, the reason I am in exile today, at no cost, and at a point when my Igbo-born counsel from Imo State, Mr. Kelechi Nnadi was trading my life for the position of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) with the Directorate of State Security (DSS) and the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Federal Republic of Nigeria, Abubakar Malami.
Indeed Barrister Kelechi Nnadi treacherously set me up in his office to for the DSS to pick me up safe for the timely intervention of Providence. Pa Asemota also gave me money with which I escaped the initial DSS arrest attempts at Delta, Anambra and Edo States, and further supported me financially in the course of my exile. And one mad woman from where I don’t know wants me to now bear arms against every Edo man?
I need not recount the number of Yoruba people who contributed selflessly to my survival in my present exile against the background of my being Igbo. Pastor Bayo Adewoye provided extensive financial lifeline right from January 2017 when my salary was stopped by University of Nigeria, Nsukka, through my tortuous exile experiences in Ghana where I slept under the open space of Kwame Nkrumah Flyover, Accra, abandoned for six months by my so-called Igbo kinsmen; through Senegal, Togo, to my arrival in Rwanda in 2021, before proceeding to Uganda and finally to the Philippines.
Bishop (Prof) Mercy Funmi Adesanya-Davis of Rivers State University of Education, Port Harcourt and an indigene of Kwara State not only provided me occasional financial support while in Ghana but facilitated my safe escape from Ghana to Sierra Leone through her colleague at University of Cape Coast, Prof Philip Gbonsong of the Department of Communication Studies, who as Head of Department gave me the whole Departmental money at his disposal at the time to enable me purchase air ticket to Freetown, after serving me the kind of sumptuous meal I had not tasted for three years at the University Guest House. Bishop Funmi Adesanya-Davis also wrote several letters of appeal to Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) to intervene in my case without any positive response.
When I turned a destitute on the streets of Freetown abandoned by my Igbo kinsmen, after being attacked in the house of the poor Sierra Leonean woman accommodating me, Madam Fatmata Kargbo at Waterloo District of Freetown, it was to a Pentecostal Church, named Sanctuary Praise Church, along Kiama Road, Freetown owned by a Yoruba man Evangelist Victor Ajisafe that I fled to for refuge where I was accommodated for one month, before fleeing to Dakar, Senegal by road through Republic of Guinea.
Before fleeing from Lome, Togo, to Kigali, Rwanda in 2021, my friend and colleague at University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Prof Obasi Igwe gave me the contact phone number of his Igbo kinsmen in Kigali who subsequently agreed to help me on my arrival. Ironically, on my arrival in Kigali I called him as the man instructed; but to my greatest surprise he informed me that he had traveled to Ghana that same day and as such would not be in position to assist me. Interestingly, this same man never called to inform me of his return from Ghana for the rest one year and two months I stayed in Rwanda.
When I eventually found myself stranded in the hotel I was staying in Kigali without money to pay for the accommodation bills, it was to an Igbo Pastor that the Hotel proprietress referred me to for financial assistance. The response from my Igbo Pastor kinsman was that he was not in position to help me. This prompted me to seek help from the nearby Redeemed Christian Church of God. On arrival I was cordially received by the Yoruba-born Assistant Pastor who, after listening to my sad story told me to wait for his Senior Pastor.
When the Senior Pastor, another Yoruba man arrived, the Assistant Pastor accordingly briefed him of my predicament. Promptly without prodding further into my story, he informed me that the Church could not provide accommodation for me but that they would provide me with financial support for two weeks accommodation. With this support I was able to off-set my bills at the hotel and consequently pay for a two-week accommodation before receiving further support from members of my family.
Still while in Kigali, Rwanda, when it appeared that the world was coming to an end for me after my relations in United States who momentarily came to my support decided not to support me any longer, a strange call came into my phone from somebody who happened to be a Yoruba man living in Japan named Kure. He simply told me that he had been following my struggles through my writings and that I should provide him with my details to enable him send me some money. The following day he sent me five hundred US dollars. Till this moment of my writing I have not met the man face-to-face.
Still in Kigali, one day another caller came into my phone. That caller happened to be no other person than Dr. Bolaji Akinyemi of Apostolic Round-Table Project. Without wasting time he asked me what I would want him to do for me. Confused with that impromptu request from somebody I have not met in my life before, I simply told him that I had one book manuscript I had just concluded on Fulani-Yoruba relations I would want him to help me publish. He immediately elected to publish the book for me, which he eventually did at the cost of three million naira in 2022. This was how my book: “FULANI ETHNO-ISLAMIC CONSPIRACY AND YORUBA SUBJUGATION—From Aare Afonja to Asiwaju Tinubu” came into being.
Beyond this unequalled magnanimity, Dr. Bolaji Akinyemi sent me money periodically. But he surprised me even more one day beyond all human comprehensions when I requested for urgent financial assistance from him and he showed me his empty bank account to prove to me that he had no money at that moment. Who can do such to somebody he had not met for once or not related to him?
Again in Kigali, when my Edo kinsman and neighbor was arrested for cyber fraud, I contacted a number of Nigerians for help among whom was another Yoruba man who indeed was the only person to respond. My friend was eventually released from detention and deported. But from that moment Pastor Makinde continued his selfless support to me in times of need.
Only an insane Igbo man will have the foregoing Yoruba experience and still dance to the insane drum of hatred and war between the Igbo and Yoruba by an obscure obviously insane human being among the Igbo or Yoruba. I am not an insane human being and so I will not be part of that insanity.
That the so-called Canada-based Igbo woman called Amaka Patience Sunnberger is evil and stands to be condemned by all reasonable and sane Igbo people cannot be debated. Indeed it is only a witchcraft-infested Igbo mindset that will support somebody who creates weird ethnic conflagration among her people while hiding safely in the cozy nation of Canada. Ironically none of these witchcraft-infested Igbo war drummers has thriving business either in Lagos State or any part of Yorubaland.
If she is really an Igbo woman as claimed, and is aware of the current intractable economic hardship and security challenges her people are going through, is such ethnically inflammable outburst the best recipe at this trying point of Nigeria’s existence? Thus anybody for whatever ethnic reason supports her is a political disciple of the devil.
Without prejudice to my personal experiences narrated earlier, I can state without the least equivocation that the average Yoruba man and by extension, majority of them have strong positive dispositions towards the Igbo, more than even what the Igbo exhibit among themselves. I stand to be proved otherwise. A typical Yoruba man has more respect and love to his Igbo counterpart than the Igbo man has for him.
In 1948, following NCNC opposition to the newly formed Egbe Omo Oduduwa, one of the radical members of the group named Oluwole Alakiji reacted in the following harsh and reflective words:
“We were bunched together by the British who named us Nigeria. We never knew the Ibos, but since we came to know them we have tried to be friendly and neighborly. Then came the Arch Devil to sow the seeds of the distrust and hatred. …we have tolerated from a class of Ibos and addle brained Yoruba who have mortgaged their thinking caps to Azikiwe and his hirelings.”
In response Azikiwe’s newspaper, The West African Pilot declared:
“Henceforth, the cry must be one of battle against Egbe-Omo Oduduwa, its leaders at home and abroad, uphill and down dale in the streets of Nigeria and in the residences of its advocates. It is the enemy of Nigeria; it must be crushed to the earth. There is no going back, until the Fascist Organization of Sir Adeyemo has been dismembered.”
The above two statements clearly reveal that the crisis was not one between the whole body of the Igbo and that of the entire Yoruba. Oluwole Alakiji was only talking about a particular group of people led by Zik and his hirelings and addle-brained Yorubas. Similarly, the West African Pilot equally restricted its comments to members of Egbe Omo Oduduwa.
This is one mistake most Igbo people make today. Whenever an isolated Yoruba political vagabond makes inflammatory or anti-Igbo utterances, the tendency has always been for most Igbo people to interpret such utterances as collective Yoruba opinion. Thus instead of finding ways to cover the attempted gorge of disunity being created by some insane Yoruba political touts, they help in making it deeper by adding bitter ethnic coloration to it.
Historical records have shown that the Igbo had never given to any Yoruba political leader one quarter of the political support the Yoruba had given to an Igbo man. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s political antecedents in Western Region speak volumes of the high degree of Yoruba political liberalism which can never be found among the Igbo or any other ethnic group in Nigeria. Otunba Adeniran Ogunsanya stood by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe till death and Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu died in mysterious motor accident supporting Dr. Azikiwe.
The recent past 2023 Presidential election was another point of reference to that characteristic unrivalled positive Yoruba disposition towards the Igbo. Indeed actual result of the Presidential election showed that Peter Obi defeated Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the Southwest with landslide. That the Yoruba are more liberal-minded in political terms than the Igbo is therefore not in doubt. And this is one fact every reasonable Igbo man must accept if we need the unity of the South.
In 1965 when the new Federal Minister of Education Chief Richard Akinjide refused to renew Professor Eni Njoku’s term as Vice-Chancellor of University of Lagos and consequently appointed Professor Saburi O. Biobaku in his place, the students not only protested in support of Prof Eni Njoku but a Yoruba zealous supporter of Prof Eni Njoku named Kayode Ted Adams, then a second year law student single-handedly attacked and stabbed Prof Biobaku.
Defended by an Igbo lawyer named Barrister Onyeabo Obi, Kayode Adams was eventually arrested, tried for attempted murder and consequently found guilty, even though he pleaded insanity. He was eventually confined at Yaba Psychiatric Hospital, rusticated from the University. He was later confirmed insane and left to roam the streets of Lagos until he was found dead under mysterious circumstances in October 1969 at Bar Beach, Lagos. Did this Yoruba man not die for the cause of the Igbo, ending his proposed law career in one desperate move for the sake of the Igbo?
Lt. Col. Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, first Military Governor of Western Region elected to be killed together with his Igbo Head of State and Supreme Commander Major General J. T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi then his guest, rather than be accused as accomplice in his death.
In addition, such Yoruba men of valor as Lt. Col. Victor Banjo before his disagreement with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and subsequent execution, Major Wale Ademoyega, Captain Ganiyu Adeleke, and Lt. Fola Oyewole fought on the side of Biafra against the Federal Government. Prof Wole Soyinka, irrespective of his current stigma by members of the Obidient Movement over his support for President Bola Tinubu not only openly supported the Biafran cause but spent the greater part of the civil war period in detention for that reason. He was not alone. Tai Solarin and Prof Hezekiah Oluwasanmi, then Vice Chancellor of University of Ife (Obafemi Awolowo University) were unequivocal in their support for Biafra.
Both Universities of Ibadan and Lagos had also elected Igbo students as their Students’ Union Presidents. The former President General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief John Nnia Nwodo was once President of University of Ibadan Students’ Union, and my late cousin Jones Odiaka Ayaeze was once President of University of Lagos Students’ Union; all achieved without ethnic bias in the sea of Yoruba students in Yorubaland.
Let us even look back to what happened from January 15, 1966 to January 15, 1970 when the war officially ended. During the January 15, 1966 military coup d’etat, the following victims were of Yoruba origin: the Premier of Western Nigeria, Chief Samuel Ladoke. Akintola, Commander of the 1st Brigade Nigerian Army, Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun and his wife, Deputy Commandant, Nigerian Defence Academy, Colonel R. A. Shodeinde, Sgt. Duromola Oyegoke, and Major Sam Adegoke who was killed accidentally on January 17, 1966. In spite of the above victims, the Yoruba did not rise up against the Igbo as did the Fulani but took the sad episode with a sense of political equanimity.
Indeed as American Intelligence report made us to understand, there were about 17,000 and 6,000 Igbo residing respectively at Lagos and Ibadan during the civil war, against none in Northern Nigeria. In addition, all the property belonging to the Igbo throughout Yorubaland were secured for them and consequently repossessed after the civil war, as against the case of Rivers State.
Today the Igbo are still being witch-hunted by the Fulani over the death of Sir Ahmadu Bello and bewitched by spurious Fulani political invincibility without any hope of psycho-political liberation. The question is, were the Igbo not attacked by the same Fulani in both 1945 in Jos and 1953 in Kano long before the January 15, 1966 episode? Who should account for the over 30,000 Igbo souls slaughtered by the Fulani in the course of the 1966 pogroms? This is one bitter lesson of defining one’s true enemy which the Igbo have refused to learn.
Let me conclude by stating that the Yoruba are not enemies of Ndigbo, rather the Igbo are enemies unto themselves for failing to understand who their true enemies are in Nigeria today. When you appreciate somebody’s friendliness towards you, you construct a strong magnetic field of love between both of you; which subsequently leads to mutual understanding and tolerance. The Igbo have not reciprocated to Yoruba friendliness. Until this is done, mutual understandings will continue to elude both people.
This explains why I was opposed to the utterances made by the Eze-Igbo of Oshodi-Isolo Chief Fred Nwajiagu in reaction to attacks against the Igbo in Lagos State during the 2023 general elections. There were numerous mechanisms we adopted during my tenure as President of Igbo People’s Congress in Lagos State which effectively doused such political conflagrations without degenerating into spiteful ethnic bigotry; somebody like Chief Fred Nwajiagu should have known better. The Igbo on their own part will not under similar situation tolerate any Yoruba leader residing in any part of the Southeast threatening to invite OPC to defend them.
A Western Igbo adage says, Ikpe ma nwannei, kwua; olua na nha dua haa. (When your brother is guilty of an offence, state it; when it comes to paying fine, support him. This is one position some Igbo have refused to adopt. Searching for alibi to defend Fred Nwajiagu or the so called Amaka Patience Sunnberger of Canada is therefore an obnoxious and inexcusable act of ethnic bigotry on the part of any Igbo who does that.
Today, the Yoruba have defined their primary enemies as the Fulani and their killer-herdsmen and bandits and are confronting them with defined strategy through their Amotekun security outfit. On the other hand, not only that the Igbo cannot today properly define who their enemies are both within and without, Anambra State is today designated as the State with the highest incidents of kidnapping. The Fulani herdsmen and their bandit brothers are operating from one angle killing, kidnapping and extorting hug ransoms from the people in Igboland without any designed mechanism for confronting them.
The Eastern Security Network (ESN) powered by Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) are operating from another angle busy enforcing with reckless abandon their obnoxious sit-at-home order, while Fulani herdsmen are rampaging part of Igboland; and we are told that they were established to confront the same Fulani monsters.
Every now and then we hear that one military or Police check-point or team of military patrols was attacked by people described as unknown gun-men. Oftentimes, the victims were of the same Igbo origin. So who is losing in this internal battle of wickedness among the Igbo in the Southeast? Just continue destroying yourselves in the name of Biafra or whatever but don’t involve other people, including the Anioma, Edo, and Yoruba.
As an undergraduate of University of Nigeria, Nsukka, I saw the Igbo fought and removed Prof Frank Ndili from Asaba, Delta State as Vice Chancellor for bringing infrastructural development to the University. As an academic staff, I saw the Igbo fought and removed Prof Oleka Udeala from Item, Abia State for saying he would start where Prof Frank Ndili stopped and for inviting him for the University to apologize to him. As an Academic staff I saw the Igbo fought mercilessly to remove Prof Batho Okolo from Eke, Enugu State for giving the University infrastructural face-lift.
As I am writing this from my exile in the Philippines, the nucleus of those collaborating with the Fulani and the DSS to extinguish me are not only Igbo but are entrenched in the same University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Yet in the reason for my being in exile today the Igbo as a predominantly Christian ethnic group stand to benefit most among other ethnic groups.
As I am stating these words today, Anglican and Roman Catholic indigenes of Enugu and Imo States cannot allow indigenes of Anambra State to preside as Bishops among them, yet the greatest contributions to these Churches come from the same Anambra State indigenes. Can such happen in Yorubaland? On what moral basis cam any Igbo therefore stand to accuse other ethnic groups of hatred against the Igbo? Charity must begin at home. Let the Igbo first frontally confront their self-annihilating security incubus before pointing accusing fingers of hatred at Edo and Yoruba people.
Dr. Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe is the Odogwu of Ibusa & President, International Coalition against Christian Genocide in Nigeria (ICAC-GEN)
Email: [email protected] Website: https://icac-gen.org