Ebonyi state Governor Dave Umahi has subsumed that the National Assembly may declare emergency rule in the South-East region if 2023 general elections would not hold.
Umahi stated this, while condemning the recent burning of some offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the South-East, at a media event organized by the Presidential Media Team.
He blamed such dastardly acts on criminals, who were wrongly brainwashed into believing that the 2023 general elections would not hold.
He said: “Some of them have been indoctrinated to believe that there will be no election in 2023 and that is very dangerous because if you say that there will be no election in your region, then the National Assembly could make an emergency law to say there will be emergency rule there and there is nothing you can do about it.
“So it is a very terrible mindset for anybody to be doing this because INEC offices have not been burnt in South-West or other parts of the country so we don’t know who is doing this but I know that they are criminals.”
Umahi added that South East Governors have pledged their commitment to an indivisible and united Nigeria, but noted that the peaceful agitation by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and other groups in the South-East for a better region were offshoots of years of neglect by previous governments, although the agitations have now been hijacked by bandits.
“We do not want to secede from Nigeria but we want a Nigeria where justice and equity prevails. We want peace…The situation in the southeast right now is a situation in which the non-violent approach of IPOB at the beginning has been hijacked by bandits, by cultists, by criminals,’’ he said.
