BY ANAYO OKOLI

UMUAHIA — A pressure group, Igbo World Union, IWU, has flayed Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, over its opposition to the creation of an additional state in the South East.
Consequently, the union warned ACF to desist from any action capable of throwing Nigeria into crisis.

The Igbo group described ACF’s parochial view and unguarded vituperations as the height of irresponsibility and the North’s agenda to perpetually marginalise Ndigbo.
Reacting to the ACF’s position in Umuahia, Abia State, weekend, President-General of IWU, Dr. Mishak Nnanta, also described the ACF position as an invitation to anarchy which must not be tolerated.

The National Conference Committee on devolution of power had last week unanimously recommended the creation of an additional state from South East which has only five states against six and more by other zones.
But ACF objected to the proposal, allegedly arguing that the zone did not have the needed landmass and population to deserve an additional state.

Nnanta urged the confab delegates to ignore ACF and support the proposal at plenary, saying it was part of the critical steps to be taken to move Nigeria forward.

He recalled that delegates at the 2005 Confab had also unanimously recommended a similar proposal, saying, “they intend to provoke us with such utterances but Ndigbo are peaceful and strongly united for Nigeria’s cohesion and peaceful co-existence.”

Nnanta reminded ACF that days were gone when a particular tribe or people behaved as if they were the landlords of Nigeria, insisting that all the ethnic nationalities in the country were equal stakeholders in the Nigeria project.

”The North should stop behaving as if they are the owners of Nigeria. No ethnic group is superior to another in this political marriage imposed on us by the British.
“We are all equal and nobody should think he can intimidate anybody again. Nigerians are wiser now,” he said.