BY Nkiruka NNOROM

Igbo Youth Council, IYC, has expressed regrets that 17 years after Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe passed on, his Mausoleum and Centre had remained abandoned.

Speaking after its national conference in Lagos, President of the group, Mazi Okwu Okwu, said the abandonment of Zik’s Mausoleum and Centre, started by General Ibrahim Babangida’s government in Zungeru, Niger State, was a proof of failure of the Federal and South East states’ governments.

He noted that with the Zungeru Zik’s Centre still in its state of abandonment, the Federal Government should rather turn his Inosi Onira country home to the Centre, fund and run it.

Okwu insisted that the Zik’s Centre must be made to stand side by side his Mausoleum,to tell his beautiful stories and legacies.

He said:   “If the government at the centre cannot complete Zik’s Mausoleum, what are the South East governments doing?  What will it take to give him a befitting home and Mausoleum?

“What legacy are we leaving behind when those who laboured and suffered for us to see today are hardly honoured. Who then deserves an authority figure if heroes and heroines are to be forgotten”?

“The Federal Government had commenced work several times at the Inosi Onira country home Mausoleum of Great Zik and also abandoned it several times, not that money is the problem, but lack of honour and patriotism on the part of successive powers that be at the center.”

The IYC boss noted that in other places in the world, Mausoleums were constructed to serve historical, research and tourist purposes.

“Pa kwame Nkrumah, father of Ghana, was re-buried three times to get him a befitting rest place, which today towers amongst the best and most expensive Mausoleum in the world, with great tourists attractions.

“With this, his glory as Ghanaian’s authority figure and nationalist becomes complete and makes sense before the new generation,” he said.