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Report
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Contentious Resolution Divides
Ndi Igbo in Ottawa, Canada:
A Preliminary Report
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by
Onyema Nwazue
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This is
to alert Ndi Igbo at home and in Diaspora that Ndi Igbo in Ottawa, Canada, met at the residence of Mr. and Mrs.
Emmanuel Anozie on January 1, 2005 to celebrate the New Year. At the gathering, a discussion ensued over the protracted
crisis in Anambra.
In his brief address to the approximately eighty people in attendance, Dr. Okechukwu Ikejiani, the first Nigerian
to come to Canada in 1941, former chairman of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, and a retired consultant pathologist
described Nigeria as a "failed state" without redemption. He then asked Ndi Igbo to endorse a resolution
supporting the continued stay in office of the Anambra State Governor, Dr. Chris Ngige, as requested by the leader
of the Anambra Council of Chiefs who spoke to Dr. Ikejiani recently.
As expected, the call for the politically contentious resolution
divided the audience into two camps. In the confusion, what seemed like a majority of Anambrarians, most of whom
have vested interests in Chris Ngige, voted in favour of the resolution. But, others, including this reporter,
dismissed the controversial resolution as a "political 419," given the fact that the attendees were neither
informed of the hidden agenda nor given the opportunity to debate the issues and examine the facts critically,
especially in light of recent declarations by Chief Chris Uba and President Olusegun Obasanjo that Dr. Ngige did
not win the election.
In the end, Dr. Ikejiani's invitation of Justin Akujieze, the leader of the US-based group, Ekwenche, an outfit
openly anti-Dim Odumegwu-Ojukwu and Chief Ralph Uwazuruike's Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State
of Biafra (MASSOB) lends credence to the suspicion of some of us Ndi Igbo that the resolution was an attempt by
some Anambrarians in Ottawa and their cohorts in the US to prevent Ngige from conceding the election to Peter Obi,
the APGA candidate and widely perceived winner of the Anambra governorship race in the 2003 elections.
Contentious Resolution Divides Ndi Igbo in
Ottawa, Canada: A Preliminary Report
Onyema Nwazue is the Director of Igbo Heritage Foundation's Igbo Language Center
and Deputy Co-ordinator of the International Coalition of Igbo Organizations (ICIO)
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