• Support call for Anioma State
From Joe Obukata Ogbodu, Warri
Igbo leaders, under the aegis of Igbo Unification Movement and ‘Ndi Na Asu Bia’ Socio-Cultural Organisation, have called on President Bola Tinubu to immediately lift what they claimed to be ‘the economic blockade unfairly imposed on the Igbo almost 60 years ago, which closed the main Igbo coastal ports of Port Harcourt, Bonny, and Opobo.”
They made the call in a communique issued after a two-day conference at Okpanam, near Asaba, the Delta State capital.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1718806029429-0’); });
The communique, signed by its President, Chief Kingsley Onyenwemmadu Kainebi, Secretary/Legal Adviser, Ofochi Benjamin Atagana, and Chairman, Local Organising Committee (LOC), Chief Cosmas Chikeobi Agada, urged President Tinubu to order the dredging, modernising and functionally reopen the coastal ports to re-trigger a pole of development in the East, with spillover effects to the Middle Belt and down to Lake Chad.
They called for greater unity of all the Igbo in Nigeria and also demanded for what they termed equitable distribution of infrastructure or more federal projects.
The group also lent their full support for the quest of Anioma State, for the sake of equity and justice to the Igbo speaking group in Nigeria.
The communique expressed dismay over those they described as “entities and circles that either sponsor or permit themselves as instruments of Igbo division, dismemberment, and land-locking”.
The communique expressed pride that unlike many other nationalities that can’t understand one another, “Igbo dialects are close, mutually intelligible, and facilitate easy and smooth Igbo interactions”.
The leaders thanked Senator Ned Nwoko for what they termed his unmatched efforts to have the Anioma State created.
According to the communique, the Igbo youths thanked President Bola Tinubu for the perceived gradual improvements in security nationwide, but insisted that a lot still needed to be done.
The post Igbo leaders call on Tinubu to lift economic blockade on eastern ports appeared first on The Sun Nigeria.
