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Apex Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo has debunked claims by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) that Its President General, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu was planning a trip to Sokoto State to apologize to the North over the 1966 military coup.
Iwuanyawu described the news as false while speaking with newsmen in Owerri yesterday.
Iwuanyanwu, who said under no circumstances would the Igbo apologise to anybody, disclosed that the claims were fake, emanating from a mischief-maker, who he said has already apologised about the spread of the rumour.
He said: “It’s not true, it’s fake news. The man that even carried the fake news has apologised. What happened was that we had a retreat at Enugu. Nobody talked about it. The only thing we did was appointing a peace and reconciliatory committee because we wanted peace for our people in Lagos and everywhere.
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“First of all, Igbo didn’t carry out any coup. People who were killed were not killed by Ndigbo; they were killed by soldiers. Igbo didn’t kill anybody. The coup was carried out by soldiers. It was purely a military affair, nothing to do with the Igbo. We have no reason to apologise to anybody.”
In another report, the Ikwerre people of Rivers State yesterday rejected their classification as Igbo by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo and its President, Iwuanyanwu.
The Ikwerre socio-cultural group, Iwhnurohna Progressive Organisation (IPO), dismissed the Ohanaeze claim as not only offensive and insulting but also shameful, disgusting, insensitive, careless, uncivilized and unfounded.
Speaking on behalf of IPO in Port Harcourt, Dr. Okahchukwu Dibia, said it was “not true and can never be true” that all the ancestral communities in Ikwerre originated from Igbo.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the Ikwerre people are a distinct ethnic nation recognised in Nigeria and the United Nations. Ikwerre language is one of the recognised languages in Nigeria and the United Nations (UN).”
Dibia challenged those in doubt about the history of the Ikwerre to “contact the appropriate government authorities in Nigeria and the UN.”
