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Ohanaeze crisis: Iwuanyanwu Fighting Tinubu Selfishly, Youth Wing Fire Back
The National President of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide, Mazi Okwu Nnabuike, Fired back at the Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu-led Ohanaeze Ndigbo, accusing him of playing selfish and ethnic politics to the detriment of Ndigbo.
Okwu’s comment was in reaction to a statement issued against the youth wing through Alex Ogbonna, the National Publicity Secretary of the Iwuanyanwu-led Ohanaeze.
Okwu, in a statement, said some chieftains of the Igbo group were against him because he was not dancing to their selfish tunes, added that the apex Igbo group has been operating under two factions, a matter that is now subject of litigation.
He also said that it was laughable that Iwuanyanwu, who was not elected by anyone, was busy issuing orders.
He said his only crime was congratulating President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and for commending Tinubu’s appointment of an Igbo son from Enugu State as one of the Service Chiefs.
He said rather than allow the court to adjudicate on the Ohanaeze crisis and give judgement one way or the other, “Alex Ogbonna, an errand boy and serial betrayer, has now allowed himself to be used by Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu to issue frivolous press statements against us.”
Okwu said: “The truth of the matter remains that trouble started when we congratulated President Muhammadu Buhari. All hell was let loose. They said we have committed abomination, that Igbo son, Peter Obi is in court to reclaim his mandate.
“But we made them understand that unless the court says otherwise, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is now the President of Nigeria. It behoves on every citizen of the country to work with him in order to move the country forward. If tomorrow, the court declares Peter Obi winner, we will also rally round him. That’s our stand; but they were not happy with that, they called for our heads.
“As if that was not enough, an illustrious Igbo son, Rear Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla was appointed Chief of Naval Staff and we commended President Tinubu for that appointment.
“They are calling for our head again; they first said Ogalla is not from Igbo speaking part of the South-East and all manner of things. We find this very offensive. He is a bonafide son of Igboland, from Umuopu, in Enugu-Ezike, Igbo-Eze North Local Government Area of Enugu State. Who is more Igbo than him?
“What is obvious is that once it is not someone from among them, they cannot appreciate any good thing coming from Igbo land.
“Ndigbo cried for eight years under Buhari, that we are not represented in the Security Council, but nobody listened to us. But Tinubu decided to balance the service chiefs’ appointment, yet these people are not happy, probably because the person is not someone they recommended.
“Even if they don’t like Tinubu and hate him with such passion, why not congratulate the Igbo son, Rear Admiral Ogalla? This is the height of sectional and selfish politics and we will never be part of it.
“May we ask: where was Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu all the while Igbo youths were being mowed down on a daily basis? His country home, Imo became a theatre of the absurd where countless number of Igbo youths have been brutally murdered; he has never uttered a word.
“Suddenly, he has regained his voice simplye because Igbo youths congratulated Tinubu and thanked him for appointing someone from Enugu State as one of the Service Chiefs.
“Is Enugu not part of Igbo land? Is Enugu Ezike not part of Igbo land? What exactly does Chief Iwuanyanwu and his pay masters want? He is giving full backing to Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State but waging a selfish war against President Tinubu, Uzodinma’s boss and father of the nation.”
He said the group would instead “expose Chief Iwuanyanwu and his collaborators, who are pretentiously working against the collective interest of Ndigbo.”
He further stated that: “We are happy they said the matter is before the court; so let them allow the court to decide who is authentic and who is not.
“He is a factional leader of an illegal Ohanaeze; the process that threw them up is faulty and anything built on a faulty foundation cannot stand no matter how beautiful the design is.
“We challenge Chief Iwuanyawny to show the world any section of Ohanaeze Constitution that provides for ‘selection or appointment of any official, let alone President-General’. Let him take up the challenge or stop parading himself as the factional President-General of Ohanaeze. In a sane clime, he ought to have been arrested by now and not the other way round.
“He has no moral right to call for the arrest of the youth leaders of Ohanaeze having emerged from a flawed process. You cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand.
“These are the same people who jettisoned the report by Archbishops and Bishops in Igbo land on the roadmap towards resolving the crisis in Ohanaeze. It shows they have no respect for the religious leaders.
“It is even more ridiculous that he is asking media houses to obtain clearance from him before allowing others to air their views. This has exposed the kind of person he is and the bloated image he has about himself.”
The Igbo youth leader vowed that no form of blackmail or media trial would make him wage needless war against the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has denied being partisan in handling the failed recall of the Senator representing Kogi Central, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan.
The Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman of INEC, Rotimi Oyekanmi, who was on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday, explained how the Commission handled the process.
“In the case of the Kogi Central District, we received a petition and a cover letter and of course what Nigerians were saying was that we were taking sides,” Oyekanmi said on the programme.
“But what happened was that in the covering letter, the representatives of the petitioners did not include their address as required in our regulations and guidelines and what we just did was to ask them to supply their address, it has nothing to do with the petition.
“And of course, there is nowhere in the law where INEC is asked to reject a petition just because the cover letter did not contain the address. So, there was no hanky-panky in what we did.”
Earlier on Thursday, INEC rejected the petition to recall Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan, saying that it has not met the requirements.
The electoral commission said the petition to recall Senator Natasha did not meet constitutional requirements.
Senator Natasha was suspended for breaching Senate rules, prompting some of her constituents to initiate her recall. They claimed the move was to ensure their constituency did not lack representation following the suspension of the 45-year-old senator.
Asked whether there could be a repeat of the recall process, the INEC spokesperson said the law did not specify if the process could be repeated and how many times.
“The law just talks about the threshold, the threshold meaning that if you want to recall, you must have, in addition to your petition, 50 per cent plus one signatures. The law did not specify how many times you can undertake that,” he said.
The lawmaker has made headlines in recent months after she accused Senate President Godswill Akpabio of sexual harassment, a claim the Akwa Ibom lawmaker has equally denied.
She was thereafter suspended by the Red Chamber for violation of its rule of conduct.
The National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, has handed over 19 kidnapped victims rescued by the security agencies to the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa.
The brief ceremony took place on Thursday at the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), Office of the National Security Adviser in Abuja.
The victims included Ambassador Gideon Yohanna, the former Director-General of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brigadier-General Maharazu Tsiga (retired) who had spent 56 days in captivity and 17 others, including a child.
Both Ribadu and Musa pledged to remain relentless until the criminals are wiped out and normalcy restored in the country.
“As a result of the work of our armed forces and other security services, we are able to rescue and bring back our own people,” he said.
“This time, it involves important personalities who served this country. We thank God for their lives, we are grateful to those who made it possible.
“This is an ongoing operation and we are doing it quite silently, we will go after the bad ones.”
Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan on Thursday applauded the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for rejecting a petition to recall her as the lawmaker representing Kogi Central Senatorial District.
The female lawmaker, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today, said the electoral umpire should have thrown out the petition long before it did on April 3, 2025.
“I’m a lawyer. I’m a senator and I understand how Nigeria works. For me, the most important thing is this recall process has been stalled.
“I give kudos and credit to INEC even though I believe they should have thrown it away from the get-go.
“I think it was void ab initio because there is no law in the Electoral Act that says a petition should be discarded just because there is no address but again, what if the address is false?”
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain argued that most of the addresses provided in the petition for her recall were false because most houses in her district weren’t labelled.
“Even though INEC did count 208,000 signatures, I bet you if they had gone into the verification stage, they would have struggled to even have 500 people come out to attest to signing that,” she added.
She accused Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Governor Usman Ododo and ex-governor Yahaya Bello of sponsoring her failed recall.
In a much-awaited statement on Thursday, INEC said the petition for the recall of the lawmaker did not met the requirement of Section 69(a) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended).
“Therefore, no further action shall be taken on the recall of the Senator,” INEC declared.