By Johnson Nwankwo
Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Wednesday, described the video calling for food poisoning of Yoruba and Benin natives as a product of “a depressed drowning ethnic bigot, obsessed by the negative side of history and unflinching satanic in orchestration.”
The viral video, @Anyi_anambra on tiktok, is asking the Igbo to put poison in the foods of Yoruba and Benin people, with a lady character promising “to encourage other Igbo to poison Yoruba and Benin people”. She urged Ndigbo to “get heart of wickedness and to start poisoning Yoruba and Edo; to put ota pia-paia, eat and die sniper; I will put it in Yoruba and Benin food for them to die”.
Ohanaeze, in a release signed by its national publicity secretary, Dr Alex Ogbonnia, said it would have ignored the social media video clip as coming from a “deranged psychopath or one of the fictitious narratives which with the Internet device is twisted, dressed, coated and delivered to the unsuspecting and obliging public”, adding that the clarification was to put the records straight.
Quoting Ohanaeze, “Our telephones have been inundated by various eminent persons who have expressed fears on the possibility of some persons carrying out the threats. It therefore becomes imperative to respond, especially when the National Publicity Secretary of the Afenifere, Mr Jare Ajayi, forwarded the clip and requested for prompt action.”
According to the statement, there was no sufficient evidence that the lady in question was an Ibo: “She does not in any way portray the Igbo character of thoughtfulness, discretion, self-censure and equanimity. There is no Igbo man or woman that will contemplate throwing stone in a full market for the fear of who shall be the victim.
“The Igbo travel more than any ethnic group in Africa. They also create homes away from home wherever they are found. They mix up or integrate with the local community and contribute to developing every community they find themselves. If one should poison food in Lagos or Ibadan or Benin, is there any guarantee that the first victim will not be Igbo?
“The lady must be a depressed drowning ethnic bigot, obsessed by the negative side of history and unflinching satanic in orchestration.”
The secretary general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Ambassador Okey Emuchay, in the statement, frowned at the video tape on the social media. Emuchay condemned both the video content and the perpetrator as a mischief-maker.
“They are the merchant of woes who deploy despicable and incendiary rhetoric to create ethnic mistrusts and conflicts where none exists,” he said.
Ohanaeze used the opportunity to enlighten the younger generations that the Igbo, Edo and Yoruba share a lot in common.
The release added, “We share in cultural affinity, cosmology, morphology, and hospitality. The age-long inter-marriages between the Igbo, Yoruba and Edo have produced well accomplished great grand-children.
“In spite of an infinitesimal de-enculturated deviant category amongst the three ethnics, the Aguiyi Ironsi-Fajuyi episode at Ibadan on July 29, 1966 exemplifies the inviolable fraternity, amity, and camaraderie that must always be elevated, extolled and venerated amongst the groups at all times.”
Ohanaeze assured the Afenifere, the entire Yoruba and Edo brothers that the threat “from the depraved mind should be ignored as idiotic, meaningless and vacuous”, noting that, “Throughout history, proposals by the maladjusted are always dead on arrival. We use this opportunity to call on the security agencies in Nigeria to trace the perpetrators of this macabre dance to face the full weight of the law.”
