The agitation for Biafra will stop if a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction emerges in 2023, the President General of Igbo World Union, IWU, Sir Mishak Nnanta has said.
Nnanta who received in audience the leadership and members of the Unity Federated Chapel of the Abia State Council of Nigeria Union of Journalists in his Gburugburu Ndi Igbo Dum compound, Umuajata-Olokoro in Umuahia South L.G.A, of the state, called on major political parties to consider Igbo men as their 2023 presidential candidates.
Nnanta said, “The actualization of Biafra nation is not what we need now and it will not be beneficial to us. We own Nigeria and we are the first born. We cannot abandon our rightful place. We have contributed up to 80 percent development of Nigeria. Our footprints remained indelible in all the regions of Nigeria. What we need is to get our rightful place in 2023”.
He expressed optimism that an Igbo man will emerge the next president of the country, but advised that the region should unite and collectively present a candidate who will remember home and also work for the unity of Nigeria.
He lamented that youths with brighter future had died untimely and in most cases ignorantly in the struggle of Biafra actualization.
“In the year 2008, I sat with the IPOB leader and my elder brother, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu at New York City, I told him that he is fighting a good cause but in a wrong way. You don’t insult your leaders, Gani Adams succeeded today, because of his humility. When the South East leaders called him (Kanu) to order, he would have succumbed and heeded to wise counsel. The number of people that lost their lives to this struggle is alarming. Let us fight in one move and achieve it”, Nnanta said.
Speaking earlier, the Chairman, Unity Federated Chapel of the Abia NUJ, Comrade Chidi Asonye pointed out that the chapel believes in developmental journalism, as it is the only way of helping to build, as well as advance the society.
He lauded the leader of IWU for his strides in promoting Igbo culture and his determination in championing the Igbo Language.
Asonye pointed out that the painstaking efforts of Nnanta to ensure that Igbo Language does not go into extinction and that the Igbo are given their proper place in Nigeria is highly commendable.
