March 15, 2000
LAGOS, Nigeria (PANA) - A high-powered delegation, representing the Igbo ethnic group, has met with President Olusegun Obasanjo to renew the region's commitment to a united nation, while insisting on a national conference to define the terms for continued corporate existence of the multi-ethnic country.
The 40-member delegation, under the umbrella of "Ohaneze Ndi Igbo," was led by second republic vice-president Alex Ekwueme, and also included prominent Igbo leaders such as business executives Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu and Sonny Odugwu, as well as ex-Biafran leader Emeka Ojukwu.
The group's spokesman, Ben Nwabueze, told reporters after Tuesday's meeting that the Igbos, whose failed bid to secede triggered the 1967-70 civil war, were not calling for the dissolution or dismemberment of the Nigerian federation.
But he said the recent tragic incidents, arising from the Sharia crisis, raised serious fundamental problems demanding proper definition of "the terms and conditions for the association of Nigerians as a nation."
Nwabuaze said Ohaneze Ndi Igbo, therefore, supported the call by the governors of the five south-eastern state for confederation.
Earlier, Ekwueme had in a prepared statement told Obasanjo that the so-called religious crisis had political undertones.
"Mr president, it is your government that is being questioned. It is democracy itself that is under assault. It is Nigeria that is under siege," Ekwueme, a presidential contender who lost to Obasanjo in the ruling Democratic Peoples Party's convention, said.
While restating the support of Ndi Igbo for the Obasanjo government, he urged the president to institute a commission of inquiry to establish the immediate and remote causes of the crisis, apportion blames and bring offenders to justice. Victims, or their families should also be compensated.
Igbos claim that their kinsmen and women were worst hit by the mayhem, especially in Kaduna, where more than 300 people were killed and millions of dollars worth of property destroyed, in bloody clashes between Christians and Moslems over the state government's plan to introduce the Sharia law.
The incident provoked reprisal attacks in south-eastern Nigeria.