2023: Ohanaeze Denies Involving Gowon In Campaign For Presidency

The apex Igbo cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo has distanced itself from the news making the rounds that it had chosen a former head of State, retired General Yakubu Gowon, to spearhead the campaign for the emergence of a president of Igbo extraction in 2023.

The organisation also denied that it was planning to have an interface with some prominent political figures in the country towards achieving its objective of producing an Igbo president.

It reiterated that there is no organisation as Ohanaeze Youth Council recognized by Ndigbo, describing the leader of the group, Okechukwu Isiguzoro, as a warped, egocentric and power-hungry mind who obviously is living in an incontrovertible state of mental delusion.

In a statement made available to newsmen in Enugu, Wednesday by the National Publicity Secretary of the organisation, Uche Achi-Okpaga, the Organization described the allegations as mendacious, adding that it never contemplated or had any meeting where the issues were considered.

The organisation noted that the purported actions exist only in the imagination of the miscreants and enemies of the Igbo nation who are the purveyors of the unfortunate concoctions.

“If nothing else raises doubts about his bifurcated mind, how come not long ago he was the “president” of the group but suddenly metamorphosed to its ” president general”.

The organisation also regretted what it termed the unpatriotic acts of some Igbo politicians sponsoring these “equally unpatriotic irredentists shamelessly flying the kite for them towards 2023”.

It said the emergence of an Igbo president in 2023 will not be midwifed by an inconsequential group whose only mission and preoccupation is personal aggrandizement and not the collective interest and aspiration of Ndigbo.

“Ohanaeze Ndigbo, once more, calls on prominent Igbo sons and daughters to stand up and call these recalcitrant boys to order, because it could have gone to court to stop their irreverent behaviour but for the same reason it refused to face other Igbo recalcitrant groups headlong in its mild skirmishes with them—-a father does not quarrel with his children in the public” it said.

The group called on members of the public and the media to desist from using its official logo of a red cap and a feather when writing about or referring to the errant group, saying it will be a great disservice to Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide.