Ohanaeze Youths Disown Statement Congratulating President-Elect Bola Tinubu

The Ohanaeze Youth Council (OYC), Tuesday, said it never sent a congratulatory message to Nigeria’s president-elect, Mr Bola Tinubu.

Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress, was declared winner of the February 25th 2023 elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission. However, Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, and Mr Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party rejected the outcomes of the polls, and are challenging Tinubu’s victory at the presidential election petition tribunal.

Ohanaeze youths had prior to the general elections declared their support for Mr Obi on the ground that the south-east region of the country should produce the country’s president, having not produced a democratically elected president of Nigeria since after the Biafran War.

The clarification of the Ohanaeze youths followed a publication of one Okwu Nnabuihe, who claimed to be the leader of the OYC. Nnabuihe had on behalf of Ohanaeze, congratulated Tinubu, and declared the group’s support for him.

Reacting, Igboayaka O. Igboaya, OYC’s national president, told the public to be wary of Nnabuihe, adding that he ‘is impersonating and parading himself as the leader of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide’.

Igboayaka urged the general public to ‘ignore and dismiss the imposter Mr Okwu Nnabuihe’s statement congratulating Bola Tinubu as president-elect’, adding that it was ‘a misguiding statement coming from a beer parlour’.

Comrade Igboayaka described Tinubu as ‘the president-elect of Prof Mahmood Yakubu’ (INEC chairman), noting that ‘Ndigbo will not accept an open electoral fraud committed by INEC chairman’.

In his words, “Igbo youths cannot congratulate Bola Ahmed Tinubu who has charges in the United States of America hanging on his neck, not to talk of the stolen mandate he has obtained through the electoral fraud and irregularities that marred the 2023 presidential election.”

He also called on Igbo youths ‘to keep their eyes on Mr Okwu Nnabuihe over his orchestrated sabotage of Peter Obi’s presidential victory’.

Quoting him, “Mr Nnabuihe should know that he has murdered sleep and Ala Igbo won’t accommodate his continuous betrayal of the political interests of Ndigbo.

“Obviously, Bola Tinubu, Prof Mahmood Yakubu and cohorts have murdered sleep and they wouldn’t sleep anymore. They have planted the seed of anarchy, disunity and disintegration in Nigeria by holding back the mandate given freely by Nigerians to His Excellency, Peter Gregory Obi.”

Reacting to Okwu Nnabuihe’s statement urging the incoming administration to form an inclusive government as the only way of healing the wounds in the country, Igboayaka said the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, ’caused a national political instability, injured Nigeria to its bone marrow’, adding that, “The healing process, therefore, lies in returning the stolen mandate of Mr Peter Obi.”

Comrade Igboayaka said, “Anyone thinking that Ndigbo will stand akimbo and watch or be part of a country where injustice and marginalization have been designed against them must realize that the political freedom of Ndigbo from this contraption called Nigeria must be pursued by every means necessary.”