Ndigbo in Lagos have dragged the Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu to the National Human Rights Commissiondrown Over his threat to drown them in the Lagoon if they failed to vote his candidate, Akinwumi Ambode, of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Saturday’s governorship elections in the state. Two Igbo groups in Lagos,
Ohanaeze-Ndigbo Lagos and Igbo Justice Congress, have fired a petition to the Executive Secretary of NHRC, Prof. Bem Angwe, called for the intervention of the Commission to forestal the threat by Oba Akiolu.
The petitio by Innocent Arinze for Ohaneze Ndigbo and Arinze Ugwu for Igbo Justice Congress, said, “The entire Igbo in Lagos State seeks your intervention to forestall the threat by HRM Oba Akiolu, the Oba of Lagos to drown all Ndigbo in Lagos State inside the Lagoon if they failed to vote his candidate, Ambode of the APC Lagos.”
In a related development, the Department of State Services said Wednesday that it was taking appropriate action over the alleged threat.
Spokesperson for the secret service, Marylyn Ogar, said the service was handling the matter though she refused to give the details of the action being taken.
Ogar, who spoke on the matter while answering questions at the National Information Centre, said, “We are taking appropriate action. Yesterday, the service had once again warned all Nigerians not to stoke the embers of discord within the country.
“If the presidential election had come and gone successfully, we wouldn’t want people to begin to whip up sentiments unnecessarily. So we are handling it.”
Reports indicate Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State has directed a committee comprising notable traditional rulers in the state to meet with Oba Akiolu over the monarch’s recent death threat to Ndigbo resident in Lagos State.
Okorocha, according to The Punch report, charged the committee, which will be led by the chairman of the Imo State Council of Traditional Rulers, Eze Samuel Ohiri, with the task of resolving the matter immediately.
According to the report, the committee is expected to have a one-on-one discussion with Akiolu over the threat and to extract a commitment from him. The governor, who is also the chairman of the APC Governors’ Forum, noted that it was not enough to accept Akiolu’s denial of threatening Ndigbo without traditional rulers from the South-East meeting with him to discuss the controversy and the way forward in the long existing relationship between the Igbo in Lagos and their host community.
This is even as the Imo State Peoples Democratic Party officially reacted to Akiolu’s utterance on Wednesday. The party described the monarch’s threat to Ndigbo as an empty, malicious and unwarranted threat.
In a statement released by the party, a copy of which was made available to one of our correspondents, the Imo PDP condemned the death threat, saying it was unacceptable. The party wondered why a monarch would be speaking for a political party. It urged Ndigbo resident in Lagos and other parts of the country to come out en masse and vote according to their conscience on Saturday.
