2023: Ohanaeze Carpets ‘Childish’ Ngige For Asking Igbo To Join APC

Labour minister, Chris Ngige, on Tuesday, came under the hammer of Ohanaeze Ndigbo for asking the Igbos to join the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) if they want the next president to emerge from the South East.

Ngige, who is a member of the APC, had made the call on Sunday while addressing members of the party at Alor in the Idemili South Local Government Area of Anambra State.

The minister had said contrary to notions that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration had marginalized the South East, Igbos have benefited from the present government.

Ngige warned that failure to join the APC would cost politicians from the region the presidency in 2023.

But responding though its National Publicity Secretary, Prince Uche Achi-Okpaga, Ohanaeze Ndigbo carpeted the minster for the comments credited to him.

Achi-Okpaga described Ngige’s remark as “childish” “pedestrian”.

He asked, “Is Ngige from Ghana? Is he not an Igbo man? The APC got all the percentages of votes they needed from the South-East in the February 2019 presidential election. Was it a fluke or doctored? Were the votes not Igbo votes?  So if he is  saying Igbo should join  the APC, is he saying that there are no  Igbo in the APC, including himself?”

Achi-Okpaga said, “I think his statement is very pedestrian. It is just that when you want to kill a dog, you want to find a fault to hang it.  Just to find a fault to say that the Igbo are this or that. Let me tell you,  until an Igbo man becomes President nothing will move forward. Nigeria will continue to be a motionless engine.

“We have said the Igboman sees the entire world as his village. So if an Igbo man becomes president of Nigeria, there is no state, there is no village in Nigeria that you cannot find an Igbo man. So he has no time to marginalise anyone.  The Igbo man lives in Sokoto, so the government will like to build roads in Sokoto because his brother lives there. The Igbo man lives in Kafachan. The Igbo  live in Ogun. They live in Cross River. They live in all parts of Nigeria.

“The whole of Nigeria is the horizon of Igbo man. There’s no ethnicity in Igbo man. It is only the Igbo that practise one Nigeria, every other person is a hypocrite. So until Igbo man becomes president, Nigeria will keep running round the same circle. What Ngige said was just childish.”