Ahead of the 2023 general elections, pan-Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide has said Nigeria is facing a synchronized national crisis that could lead to its eventual collapse or dismemberment and that the only way to salvage the situation is for an Igbo president to be elected.

Addressing newsmen after its National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Enugu, the President-General of the group, George Obiozor, said they would soon announce the composition of the “persuasion team that will recognise those that are critical in Nigeria, including our own people.”

”They will also talk to our people here that are aspiring for the presidency. The team is non-partisan and non-political. We will try to reach everybody on the need for the South East to produce the next president” he said

He described the president of South East origin as an idea whose time has come and reminded Nigerians that at 62, the country needed introspective and retrospective thinking to reassess its journey so far as a nation or as a country.

He restated that the Igbos are not secessionists or separatists, adding that they were prepared, and deserved the presidency because it was politically defensible and morally justifiable.

“If the truth must be told, the nation has made two consistent mistakes that have worsened the country’s other problems leading the nation to near breaking points. 

These two devils in Nigerian politics are power sharing and social injustice. In all, we drifted into these two problems with nonchalance or with ease, and sometimes, oblivious of their consequences until what we think is a simple or easy problem develops into a national disaster or catastrophe. For those who can remember, how did we get into the Western Region crisis in the 1960s? How did we get to the civil war (1967-1970)? How did we get to NADECO (Abiola crisis) and even South South Avengers? 

Today, the situation of the country is not totally different but even more complicated. Today, indeed, the way things are, with communication and modern technology, our country is set not only at the usual breaking points which were more easily controlled and contained in the past to preserve Nigerian unity, but a point of synchronised national crisis which will be more difficult to be controlled or contained today.

Nigeria was a country negotiated and amalgamated under some agreements that balanced sensitive issues of power-sharing and balancing of power regardless of any other conditions. It was a system where every person had an equal chance in life regardless of their tribe, race or religion…”Obiozor said