Ifeanyi Okowa, the governor of Delta state, on Sunday, June 11, 2017 appealed to Nigerians to guide against making provocative utterances that could lead to war.
Okowa, who made the call at a thanksgiving service to mark the second anniversary of the state’s sixth House of Assembly at the Living Faith Church in Asaba, urged Nigerians to continue to pray for the peace and unity of the country.
Okowa said prayer was necessary to overcome the present challenges facing the nation.
According to the governor, Nigeria today depends on God to continue to survive because in the last few days a lot of things have happened.
“There is threat by the words of men but I know that by God’s grace, Nigeria is one and God will continue to keep us together.
“In this very trying time, Christians must be on their knees to continue to pray for this nation; we do not want to see any more wars neither do we want to see things that will put us apart from one another.’’
Okowa, therefore, advised Nigerians to reflect on the past in order to forge ahead.
Leave The North By October 1 – Arewa Groups Warn Igbos
A coalition of prominent groups in Northern Nigeria on Tuesday, June 6, 2017 issued an ultimatum to Igbos living in the north to return home by October 1, 2017 or else they will face a situation similar to the pre-civil war pogroms visited on their kin in the 1960s.
The order was contained in an error-ridden statement, obtained by The Trent, issued after a meeting in Kaduna State. The groups, Arewa Citizens Action for Change, Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Arewa Youth Development Foundation, Arewa Students Forum, and the Northern Emancipation Network, asked the Igbo residing in the region to “start making plans to leave.”
The chilling statement condemned the renewed call for the independent republic of Biafra and also expressed disdain for the Igbos and their culture saying that “the Igbo people of the South-East, not repentant of the carnage it wrought on the nation in 1966, is today boldly reliving those sinister intentions connoted by the Biafran agitation that led to the very first bloody insurrection in Nigeria’s history”.
In 1966, the Igbos were the victims of the largest genocide in Nigeria’s history with over 100,000 of them killed in Northern Nigeria by northern mobs. This pogrom led to the declaration of the Republic of Biafra which led to the Nigerian civil war in which over 3 million Igbos died.
The northern groups’ threat to Igbos is now widely referred to as the Kaduna Declaration and has been widely condemned by public officials and political groups. However, it has also received wide support from northern elements like Professor Abdullahi.
Additional reports by News Agency of Nigeria.
