THE Igbo Women Elders Council has rejected the recent asylum offered to the Igbo-speaking people of Nigeria while stating that it was an attempt to lure Igbo males away from the South East to create room for jihadist’s occupation of the region without resistance.

“How come that Britain held a referendum and exited the European Union (EU) but refuses to support the self-determination agitation by Igbos or put pressure on the Federal Government of Nigeria to restructure the country?

“Our demand from the British government is to pressurize the federal government to immediately restructure the country and give all regions a sense of belonging and a level playing field,” it said.

At the conference, the group also made some demands from the presidency which includes: Igbo Presidency, “Where in 2023 all political parties must field an Igbo presidential candidate to offer the voters an array of choices to make. The emergence of a President of Nigeria of Igbo extraction is the only peace and economic revival in Nigeria.

They also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to as a matter of urgency “Relieve his minister of communication and digital economy, Sheikh Isa Ali Pantami of the huge responsibility he is wielding to answer for all the atrocities committed against the Nigerian State.

“The minister openly admitted that he was a fundamentalist at his younger adult age but today, he has reformed.  No amount of reformation can bring a fundamentalist to reason correctly.

Contrary to what the women referred to as “Asylum to all Igbo speaking people of Nigeria”, the British government had only granted the offer to “persecuted” members of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, a group that the Nigerian government had designated as a terrorist organization, and to the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB.

Although the British Government had withdrawn its offer, both the IPOB and MASSOB had, however, rejected the offer of asylum and instead requested a referendum for self-determination in the South East.

– April 29, 2021 @ 16:59 GMT