Nwodo Replies Ango Abdullahi, Expresses Fear Over Fate Of Ndigbo In North

The president-general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, Wednesday, frowned on the statement credited to the leader of the Northern Elders’ Forum, Prof Ango Abdullahi, that ‘most violent acts against the northerners are perpetrated by the Igbo’. Nwodo, in his reaction, said the unprovoked outburst by Prof Abdullahi was ‘capable of setting the country ablaze’.

Nwodo, in a release issued by Emeka Attama, his media assistant, demanded to know ‘where and when the Igbo could have killed their northern brothers when there has never been any case of mayhem and killings against the north in any Igbo-speaking state’. He therefore challenged Prof Abdullahi ‘to make public facts to substantiate his wild and malicious claim, unless it was intended to set up the Igbo for another round of killings in the north’.

While expressing fear about the safety of Ndigbo in the north [from Abdullahi’s perspectives], Nwodo said, “The Igbo have borne the brunt and have been victims of age-long and misguided attacks and bloody orgies by their northern ‘brothers’ at the slightest upheavals in the country, sometimes even as a result of an event outside the country, and no restitution has ever been made for such losses.”

According to the statement, “Chief Nwodo regretted that the Igbo, apart from innumerable dead ones, have lost property valued at trillions of naira during such senseless attacks in the north, yet they are the catalysts of development and the unifying cord that holds Nigeria together.”

He further urged the Northern Elders’ Forum to exhibit greater caution and wisdom in addressing sensitive national issues like this, ‘rather than stoke further the fire of ethnic violence by making such unguarded, unsubstantiated, garrulous and vitriolic claims capable of igniting fire and breakdown of law and order that could consume the country’.

Chief Nwodo further reminded Prof Abdullahi that at the twilight of his life, he ‘should espouse salutary views that should bind and heal the wounds of the country so that he would leave behind a better and united Nigeria’, and called on the federal government to call ‘NEF to order and make them rescind their inflammatory statement to avoid the possible mayhem and confusion it could cause in the country’.

THE WHISTLER recalls that Prof Abdullahi, during a visit of the NEF to Port-Harcourt on December 8, 2020, alleged that northerners in the south were being attacked by the Igbo. In his words, “It is now becoming clear that most of the violence that are being meted to the northerners in various parts of the south came from people from the southeastern states.” Prof Abdullahi also said the forum would visit the southeast to engage governors in the region over their concerns.