On Monday, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide claimed that Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, had won the February 25 presidential election.
The group was reacting to a statement on the election attributed to one Amb. Tony Obizoba, who claimed to be its Director of Implementation and Strategic Planning.
Obizoba stated in a statement that Obi’s presidency would not take place this year.
The Ohanaeze, however, described Obizoba’s remark as reckless and irresponsible in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Dr. Alex Ogbonnia.
It went on to say that the available evidence showed that the former Anambra State governor won the election.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was declared the winner of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on March 1 after polling 8,794,726 votes to defeat the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar Obi, and 15 others.
Atiku and Obi have since rejected the election results and vowed to challenge them in court.
“Ohanaeze Nidigbo is impressed, thrilled, and fascinated by the groundswell and intimidating mass movement, which has come to signify the consciousness of the paradigm shift from a consumption economy to a production economy, which the Obi-Datti movement symbolises in modern-day Nigeria,” the statement said.
“Ohanaeze Ndigbo is proud to state that Peter Obi is a man whose track record of accomplishments has countervailed the regrettable and despicable tailspin of Nigerian bourgeois cash and carry democracy.
Thus, Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora have demonstrated a loud, irrepressible, and indelible landmark; an irreversible confirmation that evil men thrive because good men sleep.
“One major challenge that has afflicted the Igbo for some decades now is the adulteration of the communal sensibility, the Igbo sense of originality. This is one of the harsh realities of Nigeria’s civil war, in which Nigerian soldiers of various ethnicities, including mercenaries from Niger and Chad Republics, occupied Igbo land.
Some Igbo women who strayed from the Igbo enclaves were assaulted, debauched, and adulterated, as is common in such military occupations. These women later returned pregnant, giving birth to monstrous hybrids.
“Some of these rabble-rousing products of adultery who, because of the openness of Igbo society, have gained access to Igbo red caps have become mischief-makers, charlatans, social climbers, and media navigators who leech on Ohanaeze Ndigbo’s invaluable footprints to issue press releases for narrow, perverse, and illicit pecuniary interests.”
