Body threatens Igbo indigenes supporting other presidential aspirants
A group known as the Igbo Elders Forum (IEF) has threatened sanctions against indigenes supporting presidential candidates from other zones in Nigeria.
There has been calls for power shift to the Southern part of Nigeria, comprising Igbo-speaking southeast, Yoruba-speaking southwest, and the south-south. But, the southeast insists it’s it turn, being the only region yet to produce a democratically-elected president since Nigeria’s independence in 1960.
“The Igbo Elders want Nigerians and the whole world to note that the existence of Nigeria as a corporate entity may be seriously threatened by any attempt to deny the South, especially the South-East the opportunity to produce the next President in 2023,” Chukwuemeka Ezeife, the leader of the forum and a former governor himself, said on Wednesday.
“It has come to our notice that some of our sons and daughters are colluding shamelessly with some unreasonable and dishonest Nigerians to sabotage our collective efforts to produce the next President of Nigeria of the South-East extraction.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the Igbo Elders Consultative Forum will not only pursue to a logical conclusion the sanctions of these shameless renegades and bootlickers, who plan to accept to be running mates to any presidential candidate not from the South as well as those who are working hard to sabotage our efforts masquerading as coordinators and promoters of presidential aspirants outside the South-East zone, but also curse them and their families publicly; we will visit them accordingly.”
TheCornet gathered that some southeast leaders will be meeting their counterpart from the southwest on Thursday.
The meeting is to enable both groups create a formidable opposition to north’s insistence to produce a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023. Buhari, a former military dictator, returned as a civilian president in 2015 and he is currently in the twilight of his eight year tenure.
