THE Youth Wing of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo has
threatened to sanction the All Progressives Congress (APC) party for allegedly
linking the former Chief of Army Staff, General Azubuike Ihejirika with the
activities of the Boko Haram sect.
The Igbo Youths on Sunday gave the APC a 48-hour
ultimatum to apologise to the ex-army General and Ndigbo, failure of which they
would label the party as anti-Igbo.
The group issued the ultimatum to APC in a
statement released from its National Secretariat titled, “Ongoing attempts to
brand General Ihejirika a Boko Haram sponsor,” and signed by its National
Secretary, Emmanuel Okwu Nnabuike and Publicity Secretary, Obinna Adibe.
According to the statement, Ohanaeze youth wing
condemned the ongoing attempts to smear the hard earned reputation of General
Ihejirika-the immediate past Chief of Army Staff on spurious allegation of
being a Boko Haram sponsor.
The statement reads further: It is on record that
the same people trying to frame up General Ihejirika are the same people, who
claimed they would make Nigeria ungovernable for President Jonathan, in the
aftermath of the 2011 presidential election.
“We view the call for Ihejirika’s trial by the APC,
through its spokesman-Alhaji Lai Mohammed, without bothering to confirm the
authenticity of the statement as malicious and premeditated.
“Now that the Director of State Security has
officially absolved Ihejirika of any complicity in the matter, we ask the APC
to issue an apology to General Ihejirika and Ndigbo, within 48 hours.
“If they fail to do so, the APC shall be formally
labeled an anti-Igbo party and other sanctions shall follow.”
“Security is too weighty to be politicised.
Therefore it is unpatriotic for political leaders to embark on character
assassination based on unsubstantiated and misguided rumours.
“Dr Stephen Davies has shown himself
to be a fraudulent character and a mercenary, whose stock in trade is the
distortion of information in order to cause chaos, thereby creating more
business for him,” the group stated.
They noted that he (Davies) employed a cheap
propaganda tactics by naming former Governor Ali Modu Sheriff, who has been
consistently linked with the emergence and sponsorship of Boko Haram as the
sect’s sponsor and therefore linking him with Ihejirika as a co-sponsor would
lend credence to the story, in the eyes of gullible members of the public.
The group noted that unfortunately, he (Davies) did
not proffer a single shred of evidence or motivation for Ihejirika, a Christian
and an Igbo from the South East to sponsor Boko Haram, pointing out that his
claim that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) official, who handled the funding
of Boko Haram “is an uncle to three of the Nyanya bombing suspects, was equally
disproved by the Director of State Security (DSS), thereby showing his story to
be faulty.”
Citing the DSS “it is uncharitable for Nigerians to
reward someone who laid down his life in defence of his country by associating
him with the sponsorship of the sect.”
The group therefore warned all those involved in
the smear campaign to desist from such wicked and unpatriotic acts immediately
and saluted Gen Ihejirika once more for the great job he did as a Chief of Army
Staff, especially with regards to fighting the Boko Haram insurgency
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