The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, says the lady who posted the viral video “Poison Yoruba and Edo” on social media is not Igbo.
The group said there was no sufficient evidence that the lady who posted the video was Igbo, adding that she did not in any way portray the Igbo character of thoughtfulness, discretion, self-censure, and equanimity.
Dr Alex Ogbonnia, the National Publicity Secretary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, made the refutation in a statement on Wednesday in Enugu.
According to him, the attention of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide has been drawn to a video clip making the rounds in social media which goes by the “name @Anyi_anambra on TikTok “asking the Igbo to poison the foods of the Yoruba and Benin people.”
He said the miscreant “promised to encourage other Igbos to poison Yoruba and Benin people”, and “Let Ndigbo get heart of wickedness and to start poisoning Yoruba and Edo.
“Ohanaeze would have ignored the social media video clip as coming from a deranged psychopath or one of the fictitious narratives which with the Internet device was twisted, dressed, coated and delivered to the unsuspecting and obliging public.”
Ogbonnia, however, said their telephones had been inundated by various eminent persons who had expressed fears on the possibility of some persons carrying out the threats.
“It therefore becomes imperative for Ohanaeze to respond, especially when the National Publicity Secretary of the Afenifere, Jare Ajayi forwarded the clip and requested for prompt action.
“There is no Igbo man or woman that will contemplate throwing stone in a full market for the fear of who shall be the victim as the Igbo travel more than any ethnic group in Africa.
“They also create homes away from home wherever they are found. They mix up or integrate with the local community and contribute to developing every community they find themselves.
“Based on the foregoing, two major derivatives emerge: if one should poison food in Lagos or Ibadan or Benin, is there any guarantee that the first victim will not be Igbo?” he asked.
The publicity secretary said the lady in the said video must be a “depressed drowning ethnic bigot, obsessed by the negative side of history and unflinching satanic in orchestration.”
He disclosed that the Secretary-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Amb. Okey Emuchay, decried the videotape on social media.
According to him, Emuchay vehemently condemned both the video content and the perpetrator as a mischief-maker.
“They are the merchant of woes who deploy despicable and incendiary rhetoric to create ethnic mistrust and conflicts where none exists.
“Ohanaeze seizes this opportunity to enlighten the younger generations that the Igbo, Edo, and Yoruba share a lot in common. We share in cultural affinity, cosmology, morphology, and hospitality.
“The age-long inter-marriages between the Igbo, Yoruba, and Edo have produced well-accomplished great-grandchildren,” he said.
He, therefore, assured the Afenifere, the entire Yoruba and Edo brothers that the threat from the depraved mind should be ignored as ”idiotic, meaningless and vacuous”.
“We add that, throughout history, proposals by the maladjusted are always dead on arrival.
“We use this opportunity to call on the security agencies in Nigeria to trace the perpetrators of this macabre dance to face the full weight of the law,” he said.