They have consequently demanded that the post of Speaker of House of Representatives be zoned to the South East, noting that it was against national justice and the principle of federal character for the North to keep the Presidency, the Senate president and the Speaker, House of Representatives”.
Addressing newsmen in Enugu yesterday, a coalition of five Igbo groups, Igbo Youth Vanguard, Abia Democratic Initiative, Imo Professionals for Democracy, United Igbo Traders Association and South East Students Unions, deplored what they termed as the return to the “evil years of marginalization of Ndigbo”.
In the text press conference read by Comrade Chikezie Emezuo of Imo Professionals for Democracy, the Igbo groups urged the President-Elect, Gen Mohammadu Buhari to quickly put the machinery in motion to halt this excursionist policy being hatched by enemies of Ndigbo to keep them away from the governance of their country.They noted that it was regrettable that when Igbo were thinking that “the negative effect of the civil war was wearing out, we are once again being reminded that we were defeated in the war and should be treated as second class citizens”.
They argued that it was offensive to human dignity and equity for Igbo to be denied top positions in the National Assembly because majority of them voted for the rival People’s Democratic Party (PDP)’.
The groups described as “untenable and unreasonable comparison of the situation in the South west between 2011 and 2015 and what is being plotted against Ndigbo, insisting that Yoruba leaders, and not the PDP, foisted the situation on their people”.
“There is no comparison at all. PDP zoned the Speakership to South West even when majority of the lawmakers were from the APC. But Yoruba leaders and other opposition figures, threw up Tambuwal who all along was an APC member. So it was neither the fault of PDP nor that of President Jonathan. But here we are ready for the post of Speaker and our leaders are solidly behind us”, they said.
On the issue of a lawmaker being a ranking member as a qualification to assume the position of a presiding officer of House of Representatives, the groups were categorically that since it was not a Constitutional matter but a House Rule, a political solution must be found to make an Igbo man who is a first timer, the Speaker.
“We have heard so much about this rule. But we must state here that there is no constitutional provision barring a first time member of the National Assembly from being a presiding officer. Otherwise, Chief Evan Enwerem and Alhaji Ghali Umar Na’bba would not have been Senate President and Speaker respectively in 1999 since they had just come into the National Assembly.
“Again, given the sensitive and critical nature of the issue at hand which is capable of threatening the unity of Nigeria, we are advocating even the adoption of the doctrine of necessity as it happened in the case of President Jonathan, to make an Igbo man the next Speaker of the House of Representatives,” they argued.
They noted that it would also constitute a huge ingratitude to notable Igbo leaders like Dr Ogbonnaya, Dr Chris Ngige and Governor Rochas Okorocha among others who risked their lives and invested their resources to work for the electoral victory of APC.
“It would also send wrong signal to Ndigbo who had not been too sure of the stand of Gen Buhari. Other Nigerians who have also been suspicious of the president-elect regarding his ethnic and religious learning will use what is happening now as a parameter to justify their fears. That is why he should call his party men to order; they argued.
The group described as a dangerous precedence, the zoning of the three top posts in the country to one geographic entity, leaving the rest with the crumbs.
“How can they justify the zoning of President, Senate President and House of Representatives to the North and then the Vice President and Deputy Senate President to the West, leaving the South South with Deputy Speaker and the South East with nothing? That is sheer wickedness and political vendetta”, they cried out.
The groups called on Dr Chris Ngige, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, Owelle Rochas Okorocha and others “to persuade their colleagues to reverse this odious imbalance less they push the Igbo to the wall”.
Source: Sun