Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide has rekindled the push for the creation of additional states for the South East.

This is as Igbo Lawyers Association (ILA) has pledged to support the apex Igbo sociocultural and political organization, in its step-up campaign for a fair share for the zone in the state structure.

The zone has been agitating for an additional state and had actually made presentations to the government, to use its legal instruments to do so, to be at par with the other five zones in the federation, most of which have six, with one having seven. But the requests had not been heeded by the authorities.

Daily Sun reliably gathered that Ohanaeze was exploring new options to actualise the objective. Already, one of its newly inaugurated committees was charged to make state creation its priority while the President General, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, indicated that the ongoing constitution review also provided another window for them.

At a recent retreat for Igbo leaders in Enugu, he reiterated the call for creation of additional state for the zone and demanded the devolution of power in the constitutional review by the National Assembly.

According to him, the Igbo were not happy with the skewed nature of the 1999 Constitution, hence Ohanaeze still stood by its Awka declaration on constitution review after a special summit in 2018.

“We stand for a restructured Nigeria where power will be devolved from the Federal Government to the states to enable the State Governments to have reasonable autonomy to develop at their own pace without any hindrance from the Federal Government.

“Our position is that allocation should be shared based on states, we don’t support the sharing of federal allocation to local governments. It’s lopsided,” Iwuanyanwu said.

ILA leader, Chief Chuks Muoma, SAN, and the group’s National Coordinator, Victor Onwerenmadu, expressed optimism that the present agitation by Ohanaeze, and its resolve to dialogue with the federal government, will be fruitful. (Daily Sun)

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