The Presi­dent General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Dr. Emmanuel Chukwueme­ka Iwuanyanwu has canvassed for restructuring of Nigeria for collective interest of the people.

Dr. Iwuanyanwu, while addressing a world press conference in Enugu on Monday, said that Nigeria is not properly structured hence the need for it to be restructured.

“Are we being denied of restructuring because of civil war? I was close to Ojukwu and I want to state that Ojukwu was not inter­ested in secession.

“As we know what hap­pened was that military carried out a coup, the coup was not an Igbo coup, the coup was carried out and they decided to say, it was an Igbo coup because Igbo officers were there and un­fortunately the coup plot­ters killed many prominent Nigerians.

“Igbos were sad because no Igbo man was happy to hear that Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa were killed because these are people who showed love to Igbos and maintained good relation­ship with Igbos, we are not happy but these people were killed by soldiers, we didn’t know anything, even this coup failed. But many young people in the north believe that the coup was an Igbo coup but it wasn’t the Igbos as the coup didn’t succeed and the people were jailed and released after Biafra war.

“The man who stopped the coup was Aguyi Ironsi. Ironsi mobilized warriors and stopped the coup be­cause the political class was in confusion. Ironsi didn’t take part in the coup but stopped the coup. If the coup plotters succeeded, Ni­geria’s history would have been different but they didn’t succeed because of an Igbo man stopped the coup, yet people are profil­ing it to be an Igbo coup and now want to think it is the reason why we should be handicapped in Nigeria.

“Even when Ironsi eventually became a head of state, people went and killed him because he was an Igbo man and after kill­ing him there was Aburi conference, and Odumegwu Ojukwu went to Aburi not to ask for secession. What Ojukwu was asking for was restructuring of Nigeria as there was nothing like Bi­afra then, we went to Aburi for restructuring of Nige­ria, to make it possible for Igbos to pursue their busi­ness in peace and happi­ness and they agreed but at a point that agreement was changed and that change was what created problem.

“So, the Igbo question must be addressed as we are not fighting anybody, we love Nigeria, we are work­ing to develop Nigeria so the issue of restructuring is still very important and that is why Ohanaeze is talking about restructuring Nige­ria,” he said.

Dr. Iwuanyanwu, who said he is very eager to serve Igbo people, said, “Nothing can be so glaring to point out the injustice that we suffer in this country for the fact that every region have got six states and we have five. This state is a means of sharing resources. Money is shared according to local government areas and today we have the least of local government areas and that is why it makes it difficult for an Igbo man to win primary to run election, so we are going to address this issue.

“I have attended so many national conferences where some approvals were given, even when we agreed that we should have additional state but I must regretfully point out that the biggest obstacle we have is internal wrangling in Igbo land as the people know our weak­ness and they throw it to us to go and sort ourselves but we must sort it out for our­selves and make sure addi­tional state is created.

“We need to have six states so that when we share political power, we will not be marginalised because ministers, revenue are shared according to state. We will do it and I believe Nigerians will support us and when Nigerians sup­port us, Igbos should also help us,” he said.

Continuing, he said, “We must do everything to appeal to the government to release Nnamdi Kanu because we believe that the release of Nnamdi Kanu is going to accelerate peace in Igbo land.”

“We will have a peace summit in Igbo land that will also involve Igbos in South-South region and in that peace summit it is very important that Nnam­di Kanu is freed so that he can contribute to what will bring peace in Igbo land and we will be able to sit him down and tell him our opinion,” he said.

Highlight of the confer­ence was the presentation of certificate of return to Dr. Iwuanyanwu by the Sec­retary-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Ambassador Okey Emuchay.