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Apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide has renewed the push for the creation of additional states for the South East.
This is coming even as a group known as Igbo Lawyers Association (ILA) has vowed to support the apex Igbo socio-cultural and political organization, in its step-up campaign for a fair share of the zone in the state structure.
In order to catch up to the other five zones in the federation—the majority of which have six states, with one having seven—the zone has been pushing for an additional state and has presented the government with plans to use its legislative tools to achieve this goal. However, the authorities had not responded to the demands.
The Eastern Updates reliably gathered that Ohanaeze was exploring new options to actualize the objective.
Already, one of its newly inaugurated committees was charged to make state creation its priority while the President General, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu indicated that the ongoing constitution review also provided another window for them.
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At a recent retreat for Igbo leaders in Enugu, he reiterated the call for creation of additional state for the zone and demanded the devolution of power in the constitutional review by the National Assembly.
According to him, the Igbo were not happy with the skewed nature of the 1999 Constitution, hence Ohanaeze still stood by its Awka declaration on constitution review after a special summit in 2018.
“We stand for a restructured Nigeria where power will be devolved from the Federal Government to the States to enable the State Governments to have reasonable autonomy to develop at their own pace without any hindrance from the Federal Government.
“Our position is that allocation should be shared based on states, we don’t support the sharing of federal allocation to local governments. It’s lopsided,” Iwuanyanwu said.
ILA leader, Chief Chuks Muoma, SAN, and the group’s National Coordinator, Victor Onwerenmadu, expressed optimism that the present agitation by Ohanaeze, and its resolve to dialogue with the federal government, will be fruitful.
