Growing traction of Igbophobia in Tinubu’s political circles

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), a civil rights advocacy group, has linked President Bola Tinubu’s alleged failure to warn his core supporters who opted to run for political office before the March 2023 presidential election to the recent wave of anti-Igbo sentiments in Lagos State and among a circle of well-connected federal government office holders.

HURIWA has also expressed dissatisfaction over the Lagos state governor’s anti-Igbo demolition programme, which he claims is his way of getting back at the Igbo people for supporting the Labour Party in the 2023 governorship race.

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HURIWA, through its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, provided PlatinumPost with a statement that stated it would follow Tinubu’s explicit directive to his National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, and all the service chiefs, particularly the Director of the Department of State Services and the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, to either independently or jointly investigate the precise source of the recently circulated letter that threatened to harm or force the Igbo community to leave Lagos.

“The wave of anti-Igbo sentiments could destabilise Nigeria if President Bola Ahmed Tinubu continues to behave as though he is unaware of the growing anti-Igbo sentiments and the presence of Igbo phobic persons in his kitchen cabinet. This is because those who hate Igbo without cause and who have been given political and economic power by the new Tinubu administration are busy encouraging their foot soldiers to continue creating atmospheres of animosity between Igbo and their good hosts, the Yorubas in Lagos and other South West states, HURIWA said.

HURIWA also pointed the finger at the ascent to powerful positions in the presidency of some of the alleged leading Igbo haters, while also citing the purported collusion between the Nigeria Police and MC Oluomo, who disseminated purportedly anti-Igbo messages during the campaign to seize control of the National Union of Roads Transport Workers (NURTW) leadership in Abuja and Lagos.

According to the rights group, these agents of separation would persist in fanning the flames of discord even from their high posts unless and until Tinubu stops giving Igbo haters political authority.

According to HURIWA, in March 2023, during the height of the general election campaigns, the chairman of the Lagos State Parks Management Committee, Musiliu Akinsanya, popularly known as MC Oluomo, threatened to forbid Igbo people from voting for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) candidates in the governorship election in Lagos by telling them to stay at home.

The organisation remembered that Nigerians had urged for security services to detain MC Oluomo on multiple occasions for frightening voters in the state due to his threat, but the DSS and police had turned a deaf ear to these pleas.

The Rights group claimed that because of alleged ethnic profiling against Igbo people in Lagos State during the run-up to the general elections of 2023, some Yoruba people, including some traditional and political leaders, accused Igbos in the state of plotting to seize control of Lagos politics from the indigenes and that this was the reason why the federal government failed to stop the rise in anti-Igbo sentiments.

The rights group said that attacks and the destruction of Igbo-owned businesses in the state had resulted from this kind of ethnic profiling.