Ohanaeze Ndigbo Urges Igbos ‘To Rise’ Against Killings In South East

The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Tuesday, condemned the incessant killings in Igbo land.

Ohanaeze’s national publicity secretary, Dr Alex Ogbonnia, stated this in a release made available to THE WHISTLER in Awka.

He said, “The ongoing gruesome killings in the South East is a very strange phenomenon in the Igbo cosmology and culture. The Igbo culture strongly abhors killing of mankind, no matter the circumstance.

“Amongst the Igbo, the killing of a human being is an abomination which attracts heavy sanctions, including ostracism for a stipulated number of years.”

He said the Igbo hold the sanctity of life high that ‘even blasphemy against the tenets of Christianity or the traditional religion cannot provoke an instant extra-judicial killing’.

According to him, “Of all the accusations or allegations against the Igbo culture, killing of fellow human beings could not be contemplated. It is not in the Igbo character. We are at loss over the ugly development in Igbo land.”

The president general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Ambassador George Obiozor, according to the statement, ‘is in grief over the rate at which the South East has degenerated to a killing field’.

Obiozor, the statement added, ‘recalls with nostalgia that the South East was adjudged the most peaceful before the attack on the Correctional Centre, Owerri, Imo State, and the release of 1, 844 prison inmates by unknown gunmen on April 5, 2021’.

According to him, “Since then, the South East has been in a macabre dalliance with siege, atrocities, abominations, arson, all forms of violence and to the worst of the extremes-killing of human beings.

“Sometimes, we begin to wonder whether the local non-state actors have the strategic capacity to overwhelm the well-fortified correctional centres, police stations, etc; or the benefits one stands to derive from such savagery.”

Ohanaeze, in the statement, mourned ‘the gruesome murder and the cruel display of the head of a serving member of the Anambra State House of Assembly, Hon Okechukwu Okoye’.

The group also condemned the alleged killing of ‘some Northerners in some locations in the same Anambra State’, adding that, “As it stands, burning of buildings, police stations, killing of human beings, kidnappings, etc have now become a daily occurrence in Igbo land.”

Ohanaeze further faulted remarks credited to the commissioner of police in Anambra State, Mr Echeng Echeng, that community leaders ‘are shielding the criminals, thereby rendering investigations and arrests very difficult’.

The Igbo group commended the Anambra State Police Command for their gallantry, commitment and sacrifice.

It stated, “We urge all the community vigilantes, youths, community leaders, traditional rulers and all well-meaning Igbo to rise to the occasion in collaboration with the police to wipe out this ugly trend.

“Because of our outreach and frontier dispositions, we owe it a duty to be kind to strangers and condemn the violence that has been unleashed over our land, especially as it affects our northern brethren.”