Ogbeh: I'm a Defender of Igbo Interest
From Chuks Okocha in Abuja
The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has risen against the accusation by a group that he hates the Igbo and also a major factor to the series of political crisis rocking the party in the South-east.
Ogbeh who spoke in Abuja over the weekend when he received a delegation of the Ohaneze Youth Council also cited incidences where he had to stand up for the interest of the Igbos.
Recently, a group "Ohaneze Youth Forum" has been sponsoring newspapers advertisement accusing Ogbeh as the sponsor of the crisis within the South-east.
But Ogbeh in defence of himself said "I don't know how one individual in this society can stand up to make himself the enemy of a whole people."
According to Ogbeh "A few things which we have done at this secretariat clearly show that we are here to defend every segment of this country. And I may cite one or two examples."
He said that after the elections in 2003, "there were certain individuals who said that we should zone away the Senate Presidency from the Southeast. I was away in UK and they started lobbying at very high levels."
He continued "On arrival, my flight landed at about 5am, I got to the house by 7. a.m. And I got a phone call. Big people in the party called me and said Oh! You know people are lobbying us to move the Senate Presidency from the Southeast. And I asked them what is the reason. They said you know that in 1999, it wasn't originally zoned to the South-east. And I said now that it is zoned there if we change it how do we explain to the South east."
According to him "I said under no circumstance, the Senate Presidency belongs to the South-east and would stay there. At a time we had this, we didn't even know who was the candidate. And when we came here every member has said naturally we cannot change it because if we do that we are sending a very nasty signal."
He also gave details of how he saved the Senate President, Adolphus Wabara from losing his post as the Senate President. "Again when the impeachment came up, people gathered to remove this Senate President, I was away on a trip and I came back and I said no. How many Senate Presidents are we going to have? How can you people continue to embarrass yourselves.."
Ogbeh gave another example of how he protected an Igbo interest in the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC). "Let us come to Abuja here, the Vice-Chairman of AMAC now is Mrs. Oluchi Mark-Okoye. It wasn't an easy process, we did it. Mark was my cabinet colleague, I was his best man at his first wedding and when the issue came, we said, first we wanted a Christian - Muslim ticket, then the Muslim candidate, there was sore clumsiness about it. Abuja is a very cosmopolitan area, but we were able to get an Igbo woman as the candidate and today she is the Vice chairman of AMAC."
Ogbeh said that he did all these to protect the Igbo interest, yet some people still place advertisements in the newspapers that he hates the Igbo.
On his role in the Anambra crisis, he said "And then the Anambra crisis for God's sake, I will tell you what we did. We started on this table and took that decision to expel those who attempted to use the police to remove a governor and replace him with another person. I will repeat it a thousand times. We will not run a government by Mafia here."
The Ohaneze Youth Council was in Abuja to disassociate itself from the continuous newspapers advertisement, which accused Ogbeh as the sponsor of the crisis in Igboland.
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