Former governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chukwuemeke Ezeife, has said
that it is either Nigeria is restructured into six geopolitical zones or
it goes into referendum to decide if the country will remain as one
country or disintegrate.
Ezeife also said the Southern Peoples
Assembly, SPA, will soon meet to take a decision on whether the people
of southern Nigeria will participate in 2019 elections if the country
was not restructured.
He went further to pre-empt that it is
possible the people of southern part of Nigeria will boycott the
election if President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration does not
restructure the country immediately.
In fact, Ezeife gave Buhari’s
government an ultimatum to immediately convene an urgent national
summit, which its agenda, he suggested, would be to adopt a framework
for the inevitable restructuring.
Ezeife made the statement,
yesterday, when he chaired the First Chinua Achebe International
Conference organised by the Institute of African Studies, University of
Nigeria, Nsukka.
At the conference, the Obi of Onitsha, HRM Igwe
Alfred Achebe, said the late prolific author, Chinua Achebe, would
always be remembered by Ndigbo for projecting the Igbo world view, the
history, culture and cosmology.
Achebe said the Igbo society
existed beyond what Achebe recorded in his books, disclosing that a
recent history book has ascribed to the Igbo as the original settlers in
Ile-Ife and whom Oduduwa met, other than the present contest between
the Ife and the Ugbo sections in Yoruba land.
Igwe
Achebe, therefore, tasked the academia in the University of Nigeria to
conduct further research that would either authenticate or dismiss the
new study on Igbo origin and settlement.
Most speakers at the
opening ceremony of the three-day international conference freely used
Chinua Achebe’s book entitled, “Things fall apart” to satirize the
present political and economic crisis in Nigeria.
Ezeife said:
“Today, the centre cannot hold any longer in Nigeria. Are we going to
watch things fall apart and allow Nigeria disintegrate?
“Today,
all speeches have been going in the way of referendum. It has come to a
stage where it’s clear that if nothing is done, there will be no more
Nigeria.
“My appeal, therefore, is that all hands must be on deck
and all brains at work, otherwise the country will exist no more. First,
there must be restructuring. After that and we don’t like it ,then any
other things can come .”
Director of Institute of African Studies,
Prof. Emeka Nwabueze, said the conference was a celebration to honour
the sage, Chinua Achebe.
Nwabueze said the institute decided to host the first Achebe conference since Achebe was a member of the university community.
He
disclosed that all institutes of African Studies in the world will
converge in UNN by November this year to draw a blueprint on how best to
teach African studies.
Other persons who spoke at the conference
included the former Governor of Imo state, Chief Ikedi Ohakim; former
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Viola Onwuleri; veteran
actor, Pete Edochie, among others.
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