Ndigbo in Kano were taken aback on the night of Saturday 14 March, when Chief Boniface Ibekwe gathered some people at Igbo House, located at 59 Church Road, and declared himself Kano’s Eze Ndigbo IV without recourse to traditional norms. That event has continued to generate ill-feelings, threatening the fragile peace within the Kano Igbo community lately.
Ibekwe, a former President-General of Igbo Community Association, ICA, who served a three-year tenure between 2000 and 2003, has been at the centre of the crisis among the Igbo in Kano. In 2003, he was accused of illegally amending the ICA constitution to give himself a second-term of three years. Amid stupendous crisis, agitation and litigation, he completed his purported second term in 2006. During this period, a stakeholders meeting was called at the instance of the Special Adviser to Kano State Governor on Inter-Community Relations (South-East), Chief Chris Azuka and the cabinet of the late Eze O.T. Nnadi, Ezedioramma III of Ndigbo in Kano, with a view to calming frayed nerves and charting a new course for the crisis-ridden community.
The road to peace was, however, blocked when the Ibekwe camp contemptuously produced Chief Chi Nwogu as ICA President in a kangaroo election held in January 2007. The battle of wits continued until 2008 when the South-East Council of Traditional Rulers, led by its chairman, His Royal Highness, Eze Cletus Illomuanya, stepped in and resolved the crisis.
Eze Illomuanya’s intervention resulted in the election of a new ICA executive led by Comrade Leonard Nwosu as President-General. It was inaugurated on 26 October 2008 by His Royal Highness, Eze Hope Onuigbo, Vice-Chairman, South-East Council of Traditional Rulers, in an elaborate ceremony held at Ado Bayero Square, Sabon-Gari.
Though the Ibekwe/Nwogu group challenged the emergence of the Leonard Nwosu executive, the new ICA executive, in its determination to carry everybody along, extended the olive branch to the Ibekwe camp, inviting it to come on board in the interest of peace. “But they continued to play God,” said Comrade Nwosu. The question being asked in Kano is, where will this recalcitrance lead the community? Further crisis and even more litigation.
Report By Madubuachi Nmeribeh.
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