Ohanaeze, the Apex-Igbo socio-cultural organisation, has dismissed insinuations by Anambra State governor Chukwuma Soludo that the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi will not win the 2023 presidential election.
Soludo had in a post on Monday said Obi will not win, technically endorsing the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
Ambassador George Obiozor, the president-general of the Igbo organisation, also dismissed the claim that the organisation had taken Soludo to two Igbo divinities and deities for punishment for attacking Obi and insinuating that he would not win the presidential election.
The national publicity secretary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Dr Chiedozie Ogbonnia in a statement on Wednesday, said that following Soludo’s outbursts, the apex-Igbo body met on November 15, 2022, and, not only affirmed the earlier decision of the organisation that the country’s president in 2023 should come from the South East but, that Peter Obi has shown sufficient capacity to occupy Nigeria’s number one position.
“For the avoidance of doubt, Ohanaeze Ndigbo has never contemplated consultation with deities in seeking solutions for the Igbo dilemma. The Igbo are profoundly endowed in various ways least of which is a resort to deities.
“It needs be added that on November 15, 2022, the National Executive Committee of Ohanaeze Ndigbo held a meeting presided over by Obiozor.
“Having traversed the length and breadth of the country on an advocacy mission for the emergence of a President of Nigeria from the South East zone in the 2023 general elections.
“We expected a positive outcome, but the two major political parties, APC and PDP rejected with impunity and impudence the practice and convention of the last twenty years of rotation and zoning of office of the President.
“However, the emergence of Mr. Peter Obi as of today has fulfilled all the expectations of Ndigbo to participate in the 2023 presidential elections which includes winning the primaries of the party and being nominated as the presidential candidate of the party.
“This is the advice given to all Igbo contestants in the 2023 presidential election which is appropriate by virtue of justice, equity and fairness.
“The whole country knows this to be the truth and the whole world knows this to be the fact, all of them are watching events in Nigeria either with trepidation or doubt.
“The situation in the country today offers Ndigbo the opportunity to relaunch themselves in all socio-political dimensions.
“Yet, we must keep asking the rest of Nigerians, ‘what do they really want to do with Ndigbo? The decision will be theirs and the response will be ours. In other words, the position of Ohanaeze Ndigbo and of course the Igbo with respect to 2023 is a constant.
“We rather used the opportunity to thank all the eminent Nigerians that have lent their support or thrown their weight behind the cause of justice, equity, unity, progress and corporate existence of Nigeria in the person of Mr. Peter Obi. For Ohanaeze Ndigbo, it is either one is with us or against us but never will Nigerians be distracted, since history beckons.
“For several years to come, it will be recorded as ‘once upon a time, Ndigbo were shortchanged in the political calculations of Nigeria and Mr. Peter Obi from Anambra State braved up to change the narratives and that he was able to fill the Nigerian expectations.’
“All the dynamics and intrigues associated with the above scenario will form the essential component of the Igbo history”, Obiozor stated further.
