Ohanaeze: No conflict between North and South

Meanwhile, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, yesterday, said there was no conflict between the North and the South even as it dismissed claims that the South East region had issued a quit notice to northerners.
It condemned attempts in some quarters to turn ongoing conversations about the carnage caused by suspected Fulani cattle herders as a confrontation between the north and south and called on northern and southern elite to desist from inflammatory statements and the canvassing of narratives that could stoke ethnic conflicts.
National Publicity Secretary, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Chief Chiedozie Alex Ogbonnia, in a statement made available to Daily Sun, said: “Ohanaze Ndigbo is concerned about recent developments in Nigeria around the activities of herdsmen of Fulani stock said to be foreigners, who have caused damage across the land and elicited negative reactions. While that is disturbing enough, we are distressed by the tenor of conversations on the subject pushed by persons who should otherwise do better. Many are framing it as a north versus south conflict; this is not correct. We assert that no one in the South, not the least the South East, has issued quit orders to all northerners or will ask northerners to leave. “Ndigbo are nation builders and not destroyers. Rather, what has happened in both the South West, South-South, South East and the Middle Belt of Nigeria are plaintive cries of citizens and their governments for lawless inhabitants of our forests and lands to stop criminality. Ohanaeze Ndigbo calls on the elite of northern and southern Nigeria to desist from inflammatory rhetorics and the canvassing of narratives that could stoke conflict and inflame passions. No one would gain from the consequences of such idle chatter but Nigeria will lose big time.”