President Goodluck Jonathan failed the Southeast, the pan Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, said yesterday.
The body said contrary to claims during the campaigns, the Igbo got a raw deal drom the Jonathan administration. It urged President-elect Muhammadu Buhari to reverse the trend.
Ohanaeze also alleged that the last elections were rigged in the Southeast because the region was “targeted by the rigging machine”.
It demanded reparation and restitution for the “abandoned property” belonging to the Igbo, which their hosts refused to return to them after the civil war.
Besides, the organisation lamented the failure to implement the report of the Oputa panel.
Ohanaeze Caretaker Committee Chairman Chief Ralph Obiora spoke when he visited the Gen. Buhari with his team in Abuja.
Obiora said contrary to clams by the Jonathan administration, no work was going on at the site of the Second Niger Bridge. He said no financial arrangement had been made for the project.
He urged the President-elect to ensure equitable distribution of positions in his administration by applying the principle of necessity to give the zone the position of Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and a top position in the House of Representatives.
Obiora said: “During your campaign tour, you saw things for yourself and it is needless reminding Your Excellency that the Southeast is an emergency case. You drove through the badly neglected and impassable Enugu-Awka-Onitsha Expressway and the Enugu-Umuahia-Aba expressway.
“Needless to mention the Oba-Okigwe highway; contrary to the election claims by the out-going government, no appreciable work is going on.
”Information has shown that no financial arrangement has been firmed up for the second Niger Bridge.
“The Oputa panel report has been gathering dust and Ndigbo have pleaded for the revisitation of the so-called abandoned property in Nigeria and its collateral reparation and restitution demanded.
“You are aware that the Southeast was targeted by the PDP rigging machine, which produced election results that denied the zone a single senator and only three non-ranking House of Representatives members.
“Ndigbo request that you adopt the principle of necessity to give the zone the position of Secretary to the Government of the Federation, which is your prerogative and in addition, a position of one presiding officer in the House of Representatives.”
After his meeting with Buhari, Obiora told reporters: “This is a visit on behalf of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo caretaker committee from the Southeast. We have come here to show solidarity with the President-elect and also ask him and inform him that actually what comes up at the last election doesn’t actually reflect the true feeling of the people of the Southeast.
“The Igbo vote with great conviction that we needed the President-elect to commence the difficult and doubting part of correcting a battered economy, an inproverised nation, a nation that is drifting and we are the representative of that body. He assured us that Nigeria is his constituency and that is very reassuring.
“We must humbly and respectfully request that because of the outcome of the election, there is a creation and a feeling of an imbalance in the political equation that the core analyst set up here, that there must be a tripod in the political equation of Nigeria; that tripod seems to be missing one leg.
“He gave us the assurance that he is going to treat the entire nation as his constituency for all and we believe him.”
Senator Chris Ngige said the Southeast was pushing for SGF, but were yet to submit names to the President-elect for consideration.
He added: “The import of what is happening in the executive branch now is that the Southeast is not represented at all and in the legislature we will not be represented because we have no senator from the Southeast.
“We have two House of Representatives members who are not ranking.”
He dismissed claims that the region is already fighting over who gets the SGF position, saying: “We have a caucus and that caucus has met on that position. We are only waiting for the party to officially tell us this is your position and we will submit names.”
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