The apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has condemned a viral video in which Amaka Patience Sunnberger, a Canada-based individual, made threatening remarks about Nigerians of Yoruba and Benin heritage.
In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Alex Ogbonnia, the group said there was no sufficient evidence that the lady who posted the video was Igbo, adding that she did not in any way portray the Igbo character of thoughtfulness, discretion, self-censure, and equanimity.
“Ohanaeze 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 was twisted, dressed, coated, and delivered to the unsuspecting and obliging public,”.
Ogbonnia, however, said their telephones had been inundated by various eminent persons who had expressed fears about the possibility of people carrying out the threats.
“It, therefore, becomes imperative for Ohanaeze to respond, especially when the National Publicity Secretary of the Afenifere, Mr. Jare Ajayi, forwarded the clip and requested prompt action.
“There is no Igbo man or woman that will contemplate throwing stones in a full market for the fear of who shall be the victim, as 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 in.
Based on the foregoing, two major derivatives emerge: if one should poison food in Lagos, Ibadan, or Benin, is there any guarantee that the first victim will not be Igbo?” he asked.
The publicity secretary said the lady in the said video must be a “depressed, drowning ethnic bigot, obsessed by the negative side of history, and unflinching satanic in orchestration.”
He disclosed that the Secretary-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Amb. Okey Emuchay decried the audio tape on social media. According to him, Emuchay vehemently condemned both the content and the perpetrator as a mischief-maker.
“They are the merchant of woes who deploy despicable and incendiary rhetoric to create ethnic mistrust and conflicts where none exists.
Ohanaeze seizes this opportunity to enlighten the younger generations that the Igbo, Edo and Yoruba share a lot in common. We share in cultural affinity, cosmology, morphology, and hospitality.
The age-long intermarriages between the Igbo, Yoruba, and Edo have produced well-accomplished great-grandchildren,” he said.
He therefore assured the Afenifere, the entire Yoruba and Edo brothers, that the threat from the depraved mind should be ignored as “idiotic, meaningless, and vacuous.”
“We add 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” he said.
