The apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, yesterday in Enugu, demanded the payment of N2.4 trillion as reparation and restitution from the Federal Government.
The money, the organisation said, was for the killings, violations, atrocities and injustices perpetrated against the Igbo nation in Nigeria since 1966.
Chairman of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Reparation Committee and minister of aviation in the First Republic, Chief Mbazulike Amechi, who disclosed this at a press conference, held at the Ohanaeze secretariat in Enugu, described the price on the death of millions of Ndigbo killed in the civil war and other occasions as “incalculable”, saying that the amount would cushion the sufferings the zone had passed through in the country.
He disclosed that each of the five states of the South-East and the Igbo-speaking parts of Delta State would receive a token of N400 billion from the money as compensation.
Chief Amechi also lamented that 15 years after the Ohanaeze Ndigbo sent a petition to the Oputa Panel for the reparation and appropriate restitution for the crimes committed against the Igbo, the government had refused to address the issues.
His words: “Having waited for 15 years, Ohanaeze Ndigbo on May 25, 2013, set up a reparation and restitution committee to dust up the petition and revisit the issue. The organisation has had cause to reflect on the long chain of injustices, atrocities and deprivation which have been inflicted on Igbo over the years in respect of which there seems to be no end.
“These are taking place in a country which great Igbo sons and daughters spearheaded its founding. The spirits of millions of Igbo men, women and children, who have been unjustly murdered over the years, are crying for justice. It is incalculable to put a price on the death of millions of Ndigbo who were killed in the civil war and are still being killed by Boko Haram in the North-East Nigeria.
“In January 1966, some officers in the Nigerian Army organised a coup d’état and overthrew the government of nationalists and founding fathers of the federation. A carefully planned pogrom and genocide was unleashed on the Igbo mainly in the North. On May 29, 1966, they commenced what they callThe money, the organisation said, was for the killings, violations, atrocities and injustices perpetrated against the Igbo nation in Nigeria since 1966.
Chairman of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Reparation Committee and minister of aviation in the First Republic, Chief Mbazulike Amechi, who disclosed this at a press conference, held at the Ohanaeze secretariat in Enugu, described the
ed, “Araba” riots and this lasted for seven agonizing days where hundreds of Igbos were killed.
“On July 29, 1966, in what was termed ‘counter revolution and ethnic cleansing’, which began with the heartless killing of Major Gen. Aguiyi Ironsi and over 300 military officers and men of Igbo origin, escalated into the massacre of unsuspecting Igbo civilians, men, women and children in many northern towns on a scale unprecedented in any part of the world, even more gruesome than the killings of Jews. This forced hundreds of thousands of Igbo to flee back to the East, abandoning all their properties in the North. As many of them were received at Enugu airport and railway station, most arrived with broken limbs, some with eyes plucked, some with cut-off arms and one body without a head.
“At Benue River at Makurdi, soldiers stopped trains evacuating Igbos to the East and picked out Igbo men, women and children, shot them and threw their bodies into the river. Some of the children were thrown alive into the river. Official figures estimated that 50,000 Igbos were killed in this operation which lasted for many days.” source: sunnews
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