By Johnson Bright
The youth wing of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Enugu State chapter, today, condemned the vandalisation and killings in the ongoing #EndSARS protest in some parts of the state and other places.
The group stated this after a press briefing it held in Enugu, alongside the state wings of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, Igbo World Assembly, and the Wawa Youth Frontier. According to them, the degeneration of the protest to its present chaos was a pointer that the protest had been hijacked.
The leader of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youths, Enugu State, Mazi Wenceslaus Ogbonnia, while identifying with the protest, condemned those who had resorted to the destruction of lives and property. He said, “The protest has being hijacked by those who do not have the original interest of the protest at heart. We, the youths, cannot continue to destroy the scarce resources that took so much resources to build.”
He commended Gov Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for setting up a judicial panel of inquiry to investigate the alleged excesses of the disbanded SARS, and also thanked the president-general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Chief John Nnia Nwodo, and the Enugu State president of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Alex Ogbonnia, for being pro-youth. He then called on the youths ‘to sheathe their swords, and embrace dialogue’.
The representative of the Igbo World Assembly, Chukwuebuka Ogbodo, added that, “We join the solidarity with the Ohanaeze Ndigbo youths in support of the EndSARS protest, but we won’t condone vandalization of property and the killing of innocent people under any guise.”
The representative of the IPOB, Enugu State chapter, Christian Okpala, and that of the MASSOB, Agu Emmanuel, enjoined all the youths, particularly those of the Southeast, ‘to desist from further destruction of our common patrimony’.h
The youth coordinator, Awgu Local Government Youth Wing of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Barr Goodnews Nwaigwe, stressed the need for the government to raise the bar of governance and bring an end to maladministration and anomalies in the land to enjoy the trust of the youths, whom he described as ‘a deprived group’.
Chairman, Wawa Youth Frontier, Barr Ikenna Odoh, called for peace and also pleaded with the youths to ‘give the government some time to implement the agenda of the protest as it has promised’. On her part, a youth activist, Nwada Ani Salome, emphasised the need for youths to ‘see the country as ours even as we protest to end police brutalities and bad governance’.
Coordinators of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youths in various local government areas of Enugu State also attended the briefing.
