2023 Elections: Igbo group warns stakeholders against reckless, provocative statements

The Igbo Progressive Front, a political group, has advised political stakeholders against reckless and provocative statements capable of heating up the polity ahead of the 2023 general elections.

The group gave the advice in a statement by Mr Njoku Mbamalu, its President on Saturday in Abuja.

Mbamalu said the group was reacting to recent criticism made by some individuals against Gov. Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, who described him as an ethnic chauvinist for baring his mind on the South East and the 2023 presidency.

He said such negative criticism against Mohammed was beyond political dispute or the holding of contrary opinion, adding that they:” are mean, nasty, and desperate”.

Mbamalu described the Bauchi state governor as an acknowledged detribalised pan Nigerian, champion of diversity and inclusiveness.

He said criticism against such an individual reduced our real politics by lowering the discourse crucial to achieving the best outcome for the Nigerian people in the forth coming 2023 general elections.

“Therefore, with great astonishment and disbelief, we wonder why a pan national figure who authored the Doctrine of Necessity that made Dr Goodluck Jonathan Acting President, will  be described as an ethnic irredentist or chauvinist,” he said.

Mbamalu added that Mohammed, a fulani who stood up to support Jonathan, an Ijaw man, at a time of recognised crisis in the nation, did his duty and spent his political capital as a matter of necessity in the interest of the nation.

This, the group leader said, was certainly not an act of a tribal  chauvinist.

He said it was ironic that some of those politicians currently criticising Mohammed, were assisted by him in the past when he was the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in their time of desperate need.

He added that it was shocking that such politicians would portray a man they had praised in private as wonderful and kind, as vile and despicable in public.

He further added that such politicians were apparently being haunted by a tragic sense of under-achievement and desperation.

Mbamalu warned that there was a just reward for wickedness as well as Karmic judgment for the ungrateful and unappreciative.