Ohaneze Ndigbo president distances national leadership from decision of Lagos branch to endorse Sanwoolu

OHANEZE Ndigbo president Chief Nnia Nwodo has denied the national leadership of the association from the decision by the Lagos State chapter to endorse Babajide Sanwoolu as their preferred candidate in the forthcoming gubernatorial elections.

On March 9, Lagosians join other states in Nigeria as they head to the polls to elect a governor and members of the state house of assembly. In more than any other state of the federation, however, Igbos form a large minority in Lagos State and their votes could be a deciding factor in what is now looking like a close race between Mr Sanwoolu and Jimi Agbaje of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Over the last week, there has been a lot of tension in Lagos as some APC chieftains have been threatening the Igbo community with attacks if they voted for the PDP. In a bid to douse the tension, Mr Sanwoolu met with Ohaneze Ndigbo leaders in Lagos over the weekend and it appears that the two sides were able to reach a deal.

After a town hall meeting yesterday, Ohanaeze Ndigbo's Lagos State leader Solomon Ogbonna, said his members have concluded plans to cast their votes for Mr Sanwoolu. Mr Ogbonna promised to mobilise the over 2m Igbo voters in Lagos to cast their votes for Mr Sanwoolu but demanded he should appoint six of their members as commissioners after the election.

However, Chief Nwodo has distanced the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation from statements credited to Mr Ogbonna that Ndigbo should vote for a particular candidate. He described the comments as a personal opinion which no Igbo person living in Lagos should take seriously.

Chief Nwodo said: “On the coming governorship and state assembly elections, Ohanaeze never met to tell Ndigbo where to vote but what Imeobi Ohanaeze said was that one thing you need to have at the back of your mind is that whoever you want to vote for should be one who agrees on restructuring so that whenever your representative is asked to vote, he will say that he agrees on restructuring of the country. It is such people you should vote for in Igboland, it’s not difficult to find such people.

“For the Igbo living outside our land, nobody should scare you people. We all have equal rights whether you reside in Igboland or in diaspora and I have been most disturbed by news from Lagos and I want to tell our people residing in Lagos that what Solomon Ogbonna, the Ohanaeze President in Lagos, said was his personal opinion and was never approved by Ohanaeze Ndigbo.

“We never asked him to nominate who to vote for in Lagos. What he said was in bad faith and nobody should listen to him. Both Jim Agbaje and Sanwoolu are contestants and they are all good people and you should vote for whoever you prefer but be mindful of who is interested in restructuring."

He then congratulated Ndigbo for their massive turnout during the last presidential elections which he said was one of a kind since the conduct of elections in Nigeria. However, Chief Nwodo declared that the results were not what were obtained in the polls as there are those that did not use card readers while some card readers did not perform at all.