According to Njiko Igbo Forum, an associate of the top Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Federal Government is still at war with the Igbo in Nigeria.
Rev Okechukwu Obioha, President of the Forum, stated this in a statement made available to DAILY POST on Thursday night.
According to him, the palliative being put out by the Federal Government to mitigate the impact of the loss of petrol subsidies will not comfort the people of the South-East region.
Obioha, who is also the Convener/Chairman of the South-East Equity Group, SEEP, stated that successive administrations’ insensitive and discriminating policies continued to be a flagrant abuse of the psyche of the Igbo man in the country.
He observed that even years after the civil war, the people of the South East were still considered defeated.
The abandoning of the Eastern rail corridor, according to Obioha, demonstrated that the federal government was not ready to include the Igbo in its development goals.
“Equity, justice, and fairness do not exist.”As long as the Eastern Corridors of the Railways are irresponsibly abandoned, no amount of so-called palliative from the Federal Government can relieve or compensate the people in the South-East zone.
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“From the days of Sure-P of the Obasanjo administration to the Buhari-led government, all other rail lines and even new ones, particularly that of Katsina to Niger (another country), were constructed and made operational, with the exception of the Eastern Corridors running from Port-Harcourt to Enugu and then Makurdi – Maiduguri,” he said.
“The situation became more insulting when the federal government pulled off the rails/slippers all through these corridors, leaving no sign or trace of a former rail line, except grasses and trees that have grown thereby,” the Ohanaeze chieftain added.
“How else can this be explained except that the Federal government, by this obnoxious brazen dichotomy, is still at war with the Igbo of the South-East?” He inquired.
“The war is still on,” Obioha remarked, “and for the average Igbo, the struggle to survive continues unabated.”
“There is nothing like palliative to the vanquished Nigerian Igbo, but there is palliative to the Nigeria Victor.”
Obioha’s remark comes amid regional outrage over the number of ministerial posts allocated to the zone by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.
Whereas the North-East has ten slots and the South-West has nine, the South-East has only five.
However, according to the Tinubu presidency’s list of portfolios, the zone received four main ministers and one junior minister.
Doris Anite is the Minister of Industry, Trade, and Investment; Uche Nnaji is the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology; Nkiruka Onyejeocha is the Minister of State, Labour, and Employment; Uju Kennedy is the Minister of Women Affairs; and David Umahi is the Minister of Works.