By Kamsi Anayo
Ohanaeze Ndigbo has upbraided Katsina-based activist, Mallam Mahdi Shehu, over his hate speech against Peter Obi, the Presidential candidate of the Labour party(LP).
Mahdi, in a trending video where he addressed a group of Northerners, claimed that a vote for Peter Obi is a vote for Biafra.
He said that Obi’s votes are synonymous with the destruction of the North.
Ohanaeze in sharp response dismissed Mahdi’s claims as not only “disingenuous but out-rightly, distasteful, mischievous, provocative, incendiary and capable of igniting ethno-religious tensions across the country.”
Dr. Alex Chidozie Ogbonnia, the spokesperson for Ohanaeze Ndigbo said: “The attention of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide has been drawn to a video clip that has gone viral, propagated by one Mallam Mahdi Shehu, a Katsina based activist, to the effect that a vote for Mr.Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party for the 2023 general election, is a vote for Biafra.
“In the video, he also alleged that a vote for Obi is synonymous with the destruction of the North. He asked his listeners what they stand to gain by voting Obi, a southerner, etc.
“After listening to the video clip, I was shocked that such narrow minded ethnic bigot that holds tenaciously to the grudges of the past is still in our midst in this millennium.
“The uncivilized remarks by Mahdi Shehu are not only disingenuous but out-rightly, distasteful, mischievous, provocative, incendiary and capable of igniting ethno-religious tensions across the country.
“The rabidity, thoughtlessness and hollowness that characterized the video signpost the last wish of a fading and end of the rope propagandist. Persons that harbour such despicable thoughts and mindsets are the pernicious cancerous social incubus which have for long held Nigeria down.
“The Ohanaeze Ndigbo calls on the Federal Government of Nigeria to arrest, prosecute and ultimately confine Mallam Mahdi Shehu in a prison to serve as a deterrent to other ethnic inflammatory chauvinists.
“If such a deep ethnic jingoism is allowed to play out in the oncoming campaigns, then the fledgling wing of the eagle may be irredeemably broken.
“Mallam Shehu and his ilk should be made to know that the ethnic cards that were played in the past to the detriment of unity, progress and corporate existence of the country have become loathsome, unserviceable and anachronistic.
“There are two primary choices in life, to accept the conditions as they exist or accept the responsibility for changing them. Evidently, there is no Nigerian, big or small, rich or poor, northerner or southerner, Christian or Muslim that is comfortable with the current state of affairs in the country.”
“Mallam Shehu, in his unmitigated myopia, lacks the basic social reflections to recall that the Christian Southerners had in the past willingly voted President Shehu Shagari, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and President Muhammadu Buhari on account of the manifestos they presented to the populace.
“The most recent being President Buhari when in our historical lethargy he promised change, vibrancy, ruthless fight against corruption and uprooting the nefarious Boko Haram insurgency.”
