“REVEALED: Peter Obi’s supporters are the people planning mayhem in Nigeria: Obi should be held responsible for anarchy
Don’t be fooled: the malcontents planning to stage nationwide protests are supporters of Peter Obi, the failed presidential candidate of the Labour Party. And he should be held responsible for whatever crisis emanates from the action.”
This is the opening of Bayo Onanuga’s X comment on a planned protest by certain elements against the worsening economic conditions in the country. The comment on X, formerly known as Twitter, is so lengthy, and I can’t reproduce all of it here.
But I want to say that Bayo’s intentions are clearly meant to set the Igbo against his people and possibly unleash the ubiquitous social miscreants on them and their properties. Otherwise, why reference IPOB and the EndSars protest on an entirely different issue?
Again, I think he is also setting the stage for a political hounding, if not the prosecution of Mr. Peter Obi. He wants to scare the Labour Party’s presidential candidate in the last election into distancing himself from the planned protest and by so doing scuttle it. Therefore, he links everybody who is angry and who wants to join the protest to Peter Obi.
He also wants to scare Nd’Igbo resident in the South West to disown the planned protest, hoping that by so doing, the planners will fail.
This is not the first time he has been doing this. He is also not the first of president Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s aides to do this. I think it is a carefully choreographed propaganda usually deployed against Igbo people once there’s a protest or a campaign for the betterment of the country.
Nd’Igbo have been at the receiving end of such stereotypical outbursts since the 1914 unfortunate amalgamation of this country. It has led to pogroms that cost the Igbo people millions of lives. It led to the civil war. It has continued to be used as an excuse to keep Igbo people out of the mainstream of political appointments at the top level of the nation’s political trajectory. Once an Igbo man aspires to lead this country, he is shut down and out with such acerbic propaganda.
But what the Ononugas of this world have failed to realise is that those years of ethnic profiling of a people have not led to the emancipation of this country. Things are getting worse. People are hungry, angry, and agitated. The Igbo people are no less concerned and are equally feeling the pains. They may be doing so with their silence and not ready to join any protests. Not because they are afraid of what Ononuga is subtly asking his people to do against them, but because they are tired of bearing the brunt of dysfunctional governments in this nation as if they’re the causes.
So, I’d advise our people to steer clear of the protests. Not out of fear of mortal retribution but because those being urged on to possibly attack us and our properties in the event of the protest taking place are not properly schooled to understand that the Igbo are not the reasons why things have fallen apart.
It is instructive to note too that president Tinubu is not solely responsible for why things are bad. He could be added to the list having been in power for long and now taking his turn to lead and possibly turn things around. But if he fails, Igbo people are not solely responsible for that and should not be made scapegoats.
I expect the apex socio-cultural Igbo group – Ohanaeze – and other political office holders of the South East to speak up on this worrying outbursts of Mr. Ononuga before things go wrong.
The Igbo people have suffered enough prosecution. Let those who brought us to this sorry state lead and organise the protest. Let’s support them with our silence.
NB: Fred Chukwuelobe, was a Special Assistant to former Governor of Anambra, Chris Ngige on Media and Publicity.
