An affiliate of apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Njiko Igbo Forum, has claimed that the Federal Government is still treating the Igbo in Nigeria with disdain.
President of the Forum, Rev Okechukwu Obioha said this in a statement made available to newsmen last night.
According to him, the people of the South-East region would not be assuaged by the palliative being rolled out by the Federal Government to cushion the effect of the petrol subsidy removal.
Obioha, who is also the Convener/Chairman, South-East Equity Group, SEEP, said insensitive and discriminatory policies of successive administrations remained a gross abuse on the psyche of the Igbo man in the country.
He noted that several years after the civil war, the people of the South-East were still being treated as the vanquished.
Obioha identified the abandonment of the Eastern rail corridor as proof that the federal government was not ready to factor the Igbo into its development plans.
“There is no equity, justice and fairness. No amount of the so-called palliative from the Federal Government extended to the people of the South-East zone can assuage or compensate them enough, as long as the Eastern Corridors of the Railways remained recklessly abandoned.
“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 the Katsina to Niger (another country) were constructed and made operational, except that of the Eastern Corridors running from Port-Harcourt to Enugu and then Makurdi – Maiduguri,” he said.
The Ohanaeze chieftain 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.”
“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 queried.
Obioha added that “the war is still on and as far as the average Igbo is concerned, the struggle to survive still continues unabated.
“There is nothing like palliative to the Vanquished Nigeria Igbo, but to the Nigeria Victor.”
Obioha’s claim is coming amid protest from the people of the region over the number of ministerial slots given to the zone by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration.
Whereas the North-East has 10 slots, South-West 9 slots, the South-East trails behind with its statutory five slots.
However, in the list of portfolios released by the Tinubu presidency, the zone got four main ministers and one junior minister.
They include: Doris Anite- Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Uche Nnaji – Minister of Innovation Science and Technology, Nkiruka Onyejeocha – Minister of State, Labour and Employment, Uju Kennedy – Minister of Women Affairs, and David Umahi – Minister of Works.
