A security consultant in Nigeria, Sir Chikwe Udensi, has predicted that the menace posed by both IPOB and ESN will be a thing of the past if an Igbo man is voted president in 2023.
IPOB is the acronym for Indigenous People of Biafra, while ESN stands for Eastern Security Network. Both organizations are offshoots of the separatist agitations in the South east, arising from a perennial sense of marginalization of the region by the Federal government.
According to Udensi, history has shown that similar challenges in recent times in the country were tackled by a deliberate effort to instill a sense of justice.
Udensi recalled when OPC was running riots in the South west, precipitating tension and killings in the region, it fizzled out the moment Olusegun Obasanjo emerged President of Nigeria.
“The next thing we saw was Niger Delta agitation as if the country was about to be engulfed in flames. Goodluck Jonathan went in there; there has not been anything like Niger Delta agitation again. People like Tompolo, Asari Dokubo, and the rest went in.
“This agitation (IPOB) will die off if Igbo man becomes the President. That is my thinking, because that has been the trend,” he said.
He insists that agitation is fuelled by a perceived sense of injustice, adding that injustice and peace do not co-habit.
“When you make an Igbo man President, IPOB and ESN will die off. That is the truth. It has happened before in this country,” he added.
On the possibility of an Igbo man being the country’s President in 2023, Udensi said nothing is impossible before God.
He noted that it was nearly unbelievable for one to assume that Obasanjo would become the President in 1999 from the prison, same as Goodluck Jonathan who was a deputy governor in Bayelsa State before his miraculous elevation to the number one office in the land.
Udensi thus predicted that an Igbo man could miraculously emerge as Nigeria’s President come 2023.
– Media Report