Dr. Dozie Ikedife, former President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo has warned that the comments of some Nigerians are capable of breaking up the country.
He slammed the former Minister of Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, Nasir El-Rufai, and other northern leaders over the way they have been discrediting the immediate past Chief of Army Staff, Major General Azubuike Ihejirika (rtd) and other Igbo icons.
Ikedife, who was a delegate at the just concluded national conference, stated that the manner El-Rufai and his fellow northern elders molested Igbo icons, was becoming too unbearable that with a little more push, Nigeria would go down the slippery slope.
Speaking to newsmen in his Nnewi country home, Ikedife said, in his reaction to the recent social media report in which El-Rufai was said to have fingered Ihejirika as one of the sponsors of the Boko Haram insurgents in the country, that such a blatant statement was capable of attracting the wrath of Ndigbo.
According to him, the accusation was another classical case of hounding and haunting of an Igbo icon in the person of General Ihejirika, who left the Army a few months ago as the Chief of Army Staff.
“I wish to recall that when Ihejirika left the Army, those I identified as destroyers of credit and rumour mongers said that he was dismissed from the Army, but my investigation revealed that Ihejirika retired as and when due and was indeed the last member of his course mates to retire from the army.
“Following that retirement, he continued, the high and the mighty in one section of the country ganged themselves up and decided to take Ihejirika to the International Court of Justice for alleged crime against humanity because, as they said, of the way he hounded, the way he tried to checkmate Boko Haram insurgency when he was head of the Nigerian army. They accused him of using undue force and fighting Boko Haram mercilessly.
“That particular accusation seems to have died down because it must be understood that in the army, you carry out orders and take instructions from the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. So, the stigma they wanted to stick on him did not work,” noted Ikedife.
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