Ohanaeze Election: Group Accuses Nwodo Of Breaching Procedure, Warns Against Imposition

The Alaigbo Development Foundation, Wednesday, warned against imposition of candidates ahead of the January 2021 election of the Ohanaeze leadership. The foundation stated this in a statement it made available to THE WHISTLER in Enugu.

The statement, signed by its president, Prof Uzodinma Nwala, entitled ‘On the Aborted Attempt to set up the Electoral Committee for the 2021 Ohanaeze Elections’, alleged that the recent Ohanaeze meeting held in Enugu where an electoral committee for the election was constituted was not Ime Obi Ohanaeze Ndigbo, but ‘a quasi assemblage of some members of the General Assembly of Ohanaeze’.

Nwala said, “The implication of this is that no meeting of Ime Obi Ohanaeze has taken place with respect to setting up the machinery for the election of a new Ohanaeze executive. On the list read out by Chief Nwodo as members of his electoral committee, no consultations were made with the respective states and bodies/organizations whose so-called representatives were announced by him. Most of us are familiar with the tradition of getting representatives of various states/organisations into any committee of Ime Obi Ohanaeze.

“In a properly constituted Ime Obi Ohanaeze, once we get to the point of appointing, for example, the electoral committee, states/organizations are requested to stand aside to nominate their representatives and return the list to the secretary of Ime Obi Ohanaeze, after which the names of nominees are collated and announced.”

The foundation added that those ‘who try to introduce controversy into the election of the next Ohanaeze executive are not fair to Ndigbo’, adding that, “Any attempt to impose any person on Ndigbo in the name of Ohanaeze leadership at this period shall be stoutly resisted by our people and our Gods, including our Supreme Chukwu Okike. We, therefore, urge Chief Nwodo and his team to urgently convene a properly constituted Ime Obi Ohanaeze so that a legitimate electoral committee shall be set up to organize the Ohanaeze election in January according to the Ohanaeze Constitution.”

Nwala also regretted that the Ohanaeze meeting held in Enugu did not mention the recent killing of some Igbo youths in Obigbo in River State. He said, “Although I came a bit late to the meeting, however, I asked and throughout the duration of the meeting, there was no reference to the genocide going on in Oyigbo (Obigbo) in Rivers State where hundreds of our kits-and-kin are being gruesomely slaughtered with reckless abandon. There was not even ‘a minute silence’ in memory of the dead as has become our custom and as observed throughout all civilized communities in the world. What echoed from the leadership was justification of the murder of those innocent victims.”