Ohanaeze Ndigbo Backs Senate’s Call For Removal Of Service Chiefs

The apex Igbo cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Friday, declared its support for the National Assembly’s Call for the removal of the nation’s service chiefs, stating that their continued retention was becoming a national and international embarrassment.

The senate had recently called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the service chiefs.
Ohanaeze’s statement, signed by Chief Emeka Attamah, special adviser to the president general on media and publicity, and made available to newsmen in Enugu, stated that, “The response by the senior special adviser to the president, Femi Adesina, to the call was unacceptable and an insult to Nigerians who are receiving the brunt of the attacks and killings. The president general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief John Nnia Nwodo, wondered why the federal government has remained intransigent on the service chiefs and refused to save the nation from undeserved calamity.”

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On the recent killing of Nigerian soldiers by bandits in Katsina, and five aid workers by Boko Haram, Chief Nwodo, in the statement, regretted that innocent lives of young Nigerian men and women and even foreigners were being wasted daily due to the refusal of the federal government to do the needful.

According to the statement, “Ohanaeze asked what was special about the current service chiefs that made them indispensable. It is unconstitutional to keep a worker in service long after he is due for retirement.”

Chief Nwodo observed that the continued retention of the service chiefs went against the grain of military service which he said ‘breeds bad blood among the officers whose careers are stunted by the action’. He added that it was not surprising that there ‘are overt dissensions in the military with soldiers resigning in their numbers due to dissatisfaction and disaffection coupled with the alleged corruption in the force’.

 Chief Nwodo remarked that ‘the situation now suggests that there is more to their retention than the interest of the country which the federal government needs to explain to Nigerians’.

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