Igbo ‘ll send The Best Brains ---Ohanaeze

The apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo rose from a meeting with leaders of major Igbo groups yesterday with assurance that the 15 delegates allotted to the South East will be selected from the best brains in the zone. Addressing newsmen after the meeting, President General of Ohanaeze, Chief Enwo Igariwey, said: “That is why we are always working with consensus; every major organisation will be represented. The important thing is that we have to field our first eleven.

“We are making sure that while looking at spread, we are also looking at quality because it is about what result we are able to achieve there. We will try the best we can to work in such a way as to satisfy the yearnings of our people.” He said it was the meeting of leaders of major Igbo organisations, including representatives of Aka-Ikenga, the Ekwueme-led South-East People’s Assembly, the Ken Nnamani-led South East Peoples Development Association and members of Ndi-Igbo Lagos.

“Like we did during our presentation to the Advisory Committee to the Conference, Ohanaeze believes in networking of ideas from all the major Igbo organisations and that is what we did today, to call the leadership of all the organisations to come, so that we rub minds and harmonise all the positions for the conference.

“We also had some members of the Concerned Leaders of Thoughts. The idea is to make sure that there is an all inclusive base position so that we will speak with one voice. That is what we have done today and we have set up a committee to harmonise various positions headed by former governor, Okwesilieze Nwodo; the Secretary-General of Ohanaeze, Dr. Joe Nworgu; Professor Bonnie Okere, Professor Illochi Okafor and Professor Ihechukwu Madubuike,” he stated.

The Ohanaeze boss said that the committee has four days to harmonise the positions after which, another meeting would be called in the next one week to brief them. He noted that some of the positions were identical and will thus need the committee to fine tune the language to make sure that the Igbo speak in harmony. “We are satisfied and we think that within the next one week, we will call them again to show them our final presentation. We will still be open to other inputs. We also had people coming in from the Diaspora, the Igbo World Assembly represented by its Secretary-General, Chief Oliver Nwankwo,” Chief Igariwey said.

Those at the meeting included first Republic Minister, Chief Mbazuluike Amaechi, former governor of Anambra, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife; former governor of Enugu State, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo; Professor Anya O. Anya, Ambassador George Obiozor, Chief Ralph Obioha, Prof. Illochi Okafor, Col. Ben Gbulie and Lolo Kate Ezeofor among others.