Apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide has distanced itself from a planned protest against the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and its chairman, Prof Yakubu Mahmood.
This is also as the Igbo group urged the Labour Party, LP, presidential candidate during the 2023 election, Mr Peter Obi to accept the outcome of the polls and move on.
A group, South Unity Youth Coalition, had announced a mass protest on June 12, Democracy Day, to demand the removal of Professor Mahmoud Yakubu as the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The coalition believes that Professor Yakubu’s leadership has severely compromised the credibility of Nigeria’s electoral process.
On his part, Obi had on Saturday while reacting to South-Africa's presidential election, said the last general election was plagued with fraud and widespread irregularities.
However, in a statement by Mazi Okwu Nnabuike, the National President of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide, he said it was regrettable that over one year after the 2023 general elections, many politicians in the country had refused to move on.
Okwu said one would have expected politicians to at this point join hands with the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu government to move the country forward.
He expressed concern that, “instead, what we have continued to see is that politicians and some of their paid agents have continued to fan embers of discord in the country owing to the outcome of the elections.
“We have said for the umpteenth time that there is no perfect election anywhere in the world.
“Our appeal to our brother, His Excellency Mr Peter Obi is to accept not just the outcome of the election, but the verdict of the apex court in the land, the Supreme Court.
“In the case of the 2023 election, without sounding biased, it is a wrong conclusion for anyone to say that the INEC performed woefully. This cannot be so, when the court upheld the majority of the election and in some of the cases where elections were annulled, it had to do with candidates’ qualifications and some other issues that could not be blamed on the INEC.”
Okwu called on those planning any kind of protest to drop the idea, stressing that “Igbo youths are not going to be lured into such a selfish agenda aimed at heating up the polity.
“Rather, we remain firmly behind President Bola Tinubu’s government and INEC. We welcome further reforms to the electoral process through the National Assembly.
“However, any form of protest, we are not going to be a party to it and those behind the plot should jettison it.”