Senior citizens in the South East under the aegis of the Igbo Senior Citizens Affairs Foundation (ISCAF) have appealed to Igbo residing in Lagos not to take the laws into their hands over recent attacks.
They also called on the international community to intervene before the issue snowball into ethno-religious crisis.
Addressing journalists in Owerri, President of the Igbo elders, Bishop Maglorious Enyioha lamented how Ndigbo traders were being treated while carrying out their daily business activities because they simply exercised their franchise.
Enyioha called on Lagos state and federal governments to compensate all those whose goods and property were burnt during the attacks.
He said during the disturbance, Igbo businessmen in Lagos lost millions of naira for no fault of theirs.
Enyioha emphasised that the Igbo are peace loving people, who have been living in harmony with their hosts, adding that Ndigbo have found homes in any part of the country where they chose to live and engage in lawful enterprise.
He said, “We have been appealing to the youths not to engage in any form of demonstration or action that will cause breach of peace in the country but unfortunately, they’re being pushed to the wall, they’re molested and their properties destroyed .
“That’s why we are appealing to the leaders of the world to intervene in the present state of the nation,so that they can see how they will call things to order before it triggers off to what we can not control.
“What happened in Lagos State recently means Igbo are rejected in their own country, we are supposed to start seeing the action of the Federal Government, Mr President should intercede and not wait for the incoming administration .
“We from the east are peace makers, kind and lovely developing anywhere we are. Igbo are everywhere but today what is happening in the country is alarming. We demand equal right, liberty and equity because we jointly owned the nation”. Enyioha said.
Speaking on the 2023 presidential election, Enyioha said Nigerians irrespective of their tribes showed much enthusiasm to make a change, through exercising their rights, stressing however that their expectations were cut short.
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