A faction of the Ohanaeze Youth Council (OYC), has rejected calls to restrict the 2023 presidential ambition to only Igbos within the enclave of the Southeast geopolitical zone.

The group says any person from Abia, Rivers and Akwa Ibom has equal rights to vie for the president of Nigeria in 2023, as many communities in the Southern states are still Igbos.

The OYC faction made this known in a statement signed by its President, Igboayaka O. Igboayaka and made available to DAILY POST on Sunday.

The group noted that it was the turn of Ndigbo to aspire to become president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, stressing that those talking about limiting the collective aspiration of Ndigbo to only include the Southeast lacks the common sense of history and are agents of divide and rule against Igbo unity.

It said a new generation of Igbo youths discovered that the artificial creation of states and geopolitical zones in Nigeria has caused greater harm than good to the Igbo race and the unity they desire.

The Igbo youth organization noted that states and geo-political zone creations are concepts of balkanization of the Igbo nation, adding that Igbos were originally occupying 13 states in the South-South, Southeast and North Central Nigeria.

OYC decried the harm of state creation against Ndigbo, recalling that in 1976, state creation divided Ndoki people into three wherein two communities was ceded to Rivers state and one to Abia state while another community was ceded to Akwa Ibom.

“Today, the culture and brotherhood of great Ndoki clan have been balkanized, but Ohanaeze Youth Council will not stand by and let this conspiracy continue. We must earnestly unify the Igbo race for economic and political advancement. Therefore, any person from Abia, Rivers and Akwa Ibom has equal rights to vie for the president of Nigeria in 2023”.

The Igbo group revealed that Umuine Igbodo in Etche Local Government Area of Rivers State and Umuezeala, Ngor Okpala in Imo State are of the same ancestral fathers, but today Umuine Igbodo is located in South-South while Ngor Okpala is in Southeast.

It maintained that Igbos in the South-South, Southeast and North Central will have the support of the Ohanaeze Youth Council(OYC) to vie for Nigeria’s Presidency in 2023.

“All the communities of Igbo Land, Abia, Anambra, Awka Ibom, Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Enugu, Edo, Delta, Cross River, Kogi, Imo, Rivers and Benue are qualified for Nigerias’ President of Igbo extraction in 2023,” it added.

OYC appealed to all patriotic and progressive Igbo men and women with a sense of history to embrace Igbo unification to actualize Nigeria’s president of Igbo extraction come 2023, by adopting the Igbo concept of “Igwe Bu Ike” and “Onye Aghala Nwanne Ya”.

DailyPost