The Igbo Leaders of Thought, ILT, on Monday faulted President Muhammadu Buhari over his stand that corruption was Nigeria’s greatest enemy.
DAILY POST reports that they rose rose from their meeting demanding the convocation of a constituent assembly to resolve Nigeria’s problems.
Buhari made the assertion in his October 1 nationwide broadcast, where he said: “we must fight corruption which is Nigeria’s number one enemy. Our administration is tackling these tasks in earnest.”
But the ILT said the greatest enemy of the Nigeria was the unresolved national question, which bordered on structural imbalance and lack of true federalism.
Chairman of the group, Prof. Ben Nwabueze took the stand while addressing journalists after the group’s meeting in Enugu.
Also at the meeting also included Major Goddy Onyefuru, Chief Mrs. Maria Okwor, Prof. Chiweyite Ejike, Chief Enechie Onyia, Prof Uzodinma Nwala, Evang. Eliot Ugochukwu-Uko, among others.
Nwabueze described Buhari’s stand as “a hackneyed rhetoric, which simply re-echoes his Address at his Inauguration as President on 29 May, 2015.”
“Not only is corruption not a threat to our continued corporate existence as a country, it is also not our foremost problem. I venture to say that our No One problem is the National Question.
“The National Question is concerned with how, while preserving something of their separate identities, the immense number of diverse ethnic groups comprised in the territorial area of the state created with the name Nigeria and forcibly imposed by British colonialism can be coalesced and united into one nation and how the state so created can order the relations among the constituent groups to facilitate such coalescing. That is the essence and the core meaning of the term, the National Question.
“The National Question, in its true essence, as defined above, encapsulates four questions which combine together to make it the intractable problem that it is. First, what is an ethnic group in the
“Nigerian (or African) context, how many ethnic groups are comprised in the Nigerian state, and what is their status or standing in relation to the state? Second, what is a nation in the context of the existence of an immense number of diverse ethnic nationalities to be coalesced or united into one nation? Third, how are the divergent demands for the preservation of something of the separate identities of the component ethnic groups and their creation into one, united nation to be balanced together? Fourth, does the National Question tantamount to the issue about the absence or otherwise of civil order in Nigeria or, putting it differently, what is the connection between the two?”
Earlier in communique read after the meeting, read by Prof. Elochukwu AmucheAzi, the group condemned the Operation Python Dance in the South-East, which recently led to clashes between the Army the Biafra agitators.
They, therefore demanded immediate withdrawal of the troops as well as those involved in Operation Crocodile Smile in the South-South.
The ILT affirmed that “the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, is not a terrorist organization”, adding that the group’s agitation was being fuelled by frustration over the state of affairs in the country.
While also rejecting the proscribing of the IPOB, the ILT said the group was operating under the extant national and international laws.
The Igbo leaders therefore, called for the convocation of a constituent assembly, to fashion out a constitution that would be tailored to the 1963 Constitution of Nigeria, where gave limited powers to the Federal Government.
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