TheCable

Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, an Igbo socio-cultural association, has asked the Department of State Services (DSS) to arrest and prosecute those planning to install an interim government.

The socio-cultural association is different from Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the group formerly led by the deceased George Obiozor. 

Last week, the secret police said it had confirmed a plot to install an interim government and stop Bola Tinubu from being inaugurated as president.

The DSS intelligence has since sparked a debate and mixed reactions, with Nigerians largely condemning the interim government plot.

In a statement issued on Monday, Okechukwu Isiguzoro, secretary-general of Ohanaeze Ndigbio Worldwide, said the DSS should apprehend the “unpatriotic elements of destruction” to ensure they don’t “derail our democracy with evil intent to forestall the smooth transition”.

“Ndigbo will never recognize any interim government or be part of the evil scheme as the clamour for an interim government is unconstitutional, satanic and atrocious as those behind the call for the interim government are only trying to plunge the country into avoidable political crises and make the Igbo as scapegoats as Nigerians witnessed in 1993,” the statement reads.

“Ndigbo will participate fully in all pre-inauguration and swearing-in ceremonies of the President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu on May 29th 2023, and caution all of those who are working behind the scenes for the enthronement of an illegitimate interim government to use the courts to vent their resentments and grievances.

“We are satisfied that Atiku and Peter Obi had explored the legal options in other to recover the mandates and challenging the outcomes of the 2023 presidential elections in court is better than restraining a smooth transition of power on 29th May 2023, as we will not allow unpatriotic monsters to truncate our hard-earned democracy

“Ndigbo condemns the call for the establishment of an interim government but insists that the President-elect should be sworn in by 29th May 2023.”

Isiguzoro said the group will “continue to support the President-Elect Bola Tinubu and ask him to commence the healing process tour from the southeast by releasing IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu and incorporate the east into the government of national unity (GNU) by giving the president of the senate to the people of the southeast”.