Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council urges Buhari to name Ogbonnaya Onu as secretary to the federal government

PAN-Igbo organisation the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council (ONYC) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to appoint former minister of science and technology Dr Ogbonnaya Onu as the new secretary to the government of the federation.

Since assuming office in 2015, President Buhari has been accused or marginalising Igbos from Nigeria's southeast geo-political zone. They have been bypassed for juicy federal appointments, hold no security appointments and have not seen any significant investment in infrastructure like other parts of the country.

As a result, this has spurred calls for Igbos to secede from Nigeria and led to the rise in popularity of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) and other secessionist groups. During the last elections in February, President Buhari's All Progressives Congress (APC) did very badly across the southeast, failing to win in any of the five states in the geo-political zone.

This may result in things getting worse as during the recent National Assembly elections, none of the leaders of the senate or House of Representatives came from the southeast. Urging President Buhari to reverse the trend, ONYC president Okechukwu Isiguzoro, said appointing Dr Onu as the secretary to the federal government will enable equity, fairness in the country.

Mr Isiguzoro said: “The leadership of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide has watched keenly the manipulated drama and scheme out of the southeast zone from the leadership of the national assembly, judiciary and other security apparatus of the country but rather than lamenting endlessly, we congratulate those who emerged as National Assembly leaders. The will of the Almighty God and we the younger generation of Ndigbo accept these realities as an act of fate and we urge Igbo leaders to shield their battle swords and quietly go into ime obi and re-strategise ahead of time for the battle royal ahead in 2023.

“We should borrow a leaf from the southwest who were in similar situations between 2007 till 2015 before they bounced back in the present moment with President Buhari. We urge that equity should be balanced in the zoning of  the secretary to the government of the federation (SGF) to the southeast and we unanimously nominate the leader who was part and parcel of that merger and the leader of defunct All Nigerian Peoples Party, His Excellency Dr Ogbonnaya Onu to be considered for equity, fairness and natural justice and for the southeast not to be completely shut off from the executive council.

“We have implicit confidence that Dr Ogbonnaya Onu, has a wonderful enigmatic personality to assist President Buhari to drive the next level agenda. We appeal to the presidency to allow the southeast to replace the northeast in the position of SGF since the northeast now is having the position of senate president.”