Chief Bode George has said that the ongoing consultations by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo is not enough to drown the drums of war beaten across the country.
Osinbajo had embark on consultations with stakeholders in the nation over threats of secession and quit notice given to Igbos by northern youths.
However, Bode George was a former national deputy chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, said that the federal government must widen the scope of the consultations.
According to the PDP chieftain who spoke to the press in Lagos, in a speech captioned, “Enough of the drum beats of war,” “the current consultations that our government has embarked upon across the tribal divide is laudable and exemplary. But they should do more.
“They should widen the consultation efforts by inviting the formidable elders and statesmen who were active participants and managers of our Nation during the dark drama of our civil war.”
He said that there are persons scattered across different areas of the country that need to be consulted to douse the tension in the land.
“The chastening voices of General Yakubu Gowon, General Obasanjo, General T.Y. Danjuma, General Alani Akinrinade, General Alabi Isama, General IMB Haruna, General Babangida, General Abdulsalam, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, Gov. Udenwa, Col. Iheanacho Rtd, Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu and many others on both sides of the divide at that time,” he said, “will go a long way in tempering the flight of fancy of the intemperate agitators who have never heard a gunshot in anger.”
Bode George warned the youths to stop beating war drums as they are too young to know the sacrifices paid for the nation’s unity, adding that not country survives two civil wars.
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.
