Irked by the continues exclusion of the South East in the Nigeria’s Project, a group known as South East Responds Team appears to have concluded plans for a nationwide protest over non-inclusion of the South East in the recently approved $22.7bn loan for President Muhammadu Buhari by the National Assembly.

The group also vowed that President Muhammadu Buhari will never access the loan until they are sure of Igbo interest in the entire project which led to the approval of the loan by the National Assembly.

Investigations revealed that Igbo groups including South East National Assembly Caucus, Ohaneze Ndigbo, Pro-Biafra Organisations have keyed into the protest plan against Igbo marginalisation.

Though details of the protest plan was sketchy, but the protest is expected to take place in the five states of the South East and Abuja being the Nigeria’s capital territory on a date yet to be announced by the group.

Recall that the National Assembly early in March 2020 approved Nigeria’s $22.7b Loan for projects and services in the six geo-political zones; the sum was shared among five zones to the exclusion of the South East zone. South West got $200,000,000.00, South South: $4,270,000,000.00, North West: $6,372,000,000.00, North East $300,000,000.00, North Central: $6,531,000,000.00, South East: $0.00.

Prior to the said approval, the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan wanted a blanket approval based on the recommendations in the report to vote and approve. The mode of adopting the report by the Senate President was rejected by the Senate Minority leader Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe.

Senator Abaribe was of the view that the various components of the loan should be subjected to scru¬tiny to determine projects that would be useful to the nation’s economy.

Abaribe said that there are some aspects of the loan that he was not comfortable with, “I want to ask on behalf of our colleagues here that we take these items one by one and vote on them. If we notice any lop-sidedness, I think it may not just be for this Senate to just impede the progress but it is important that it takes note of areas that are left out and then, in the next phase, we consider them.”

Senator Rochas Okorocha also was of the view that the people of the South East are not being carried along and warned that it has its consequences. “I want to say that the people of the South East no longer feel they are part of the Nigeria’s Project and it can be very dangerous. (Text, excluding headline, courtesy Saturday Independent)

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