UN commends Ohanaeze, Igbo leaders for dousing S/E tension

The United Nations has said Nigeria would remain one and indivisible nation as it expressed delight on the role Ohanaeze Ndigbo and other leaders of the South East played to douse the tension raised in the region a couple of months ago.
Protests staged by pro-Biafra groups who were demanding for self-determination had raised great concern in the South-East zone some months ago, making the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation to write to the United Nations.
Consequently, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. António Guterres, responded to the Ohanaeze Ndigbo letter, promising to send a delegation to meet with the group.
Therefore, Thursday the UN delegation led by the Special Representative of the Secretary General in West Africa and the Sahara, Ambassador Mohammed Ibn Chambas, visited the Ohanaeze Ndigbo President General, Chief Nnia Nwodo, and other principal officers of the organisation in his Enugu residence, where the world body thanked them on how they handled the crisis that erupted in the region.
“We indeed came to commend them on the leadership that they demonstrated few months ago. We were all getting a bit worried about events and developments in the South East of Nigeria, but thanks to their leadership and their initiatives, they were able to bring together the chiefs, the political leaders in governance, the respected persons of the South East and through these interventions we see that calm was restored and all are working to advance the one Nigeria agenda,” Chambers said.
He disclosed that “the Secretary General believes in the one Nigeria project because as he has always said, a united strong Nigeria is good not only for the people of Nigeria, but indeed for the people of West Africa and all of Africa.
“We know the strength that the people of the South East bring to Nigeria and the region. There is hardly a single country in West Africa where you will not find enterprising persons from the South East who are in their own rights economic ambassadors of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Flagging off the interaction with newsmen, Ohanaeze Ndigbo leader, Chief Nwodo, disclosed that on July 10 this year, they wrote “to the Secretary General of the United Nations about the security infrastructure in our country as it pertains to Ndigbo,” adding that the UN Secretary General replied them on October 10, and indicated that he was sending his representatives for West Africa and the Sahara, Amb. Chambas to see them.
|Sun