..Says They Will Produce President When They Find Peace With Nigeria
Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodinma, has advised the South East to forget the presidency in 2023, saying it would produce a president of Nigeria the day they find peace with the country or became the economic and technological giant of the country that would make it an irresistible option.
Speaking at a lecture in honour of an elder statesman, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu’s80th birthday, in Owerri, the state capital, he said the Igbo must pursue the Israeli model, where they made themselves so attractive as global players in critical areas that their freedom became inescapable.
Dwelling more on the similarities between the two situations, Uzodinma argued that Ndigbo, just like technology in many areas including farming with modern implements as opposed to hoes and cutlasses, must not insist on the method battling their peculiar situation in the country by the same method their founding fathers adopted.
“Must we continue on that part that didn’t work 70 years ago? What of innovation? What of research? What about deploying the right thought process to think like in the 21st century challenges turnaround? What our forefathers did, they farmed with hoes and shovels, but today, mechanised agriculture is in vogue and today, we’re migrating from the analogue way of agriculture to the mechanised way.
“The Igbo may be likened to the Jews. The Jews had the experiences and challenges we’re having today. Israel did not get independence because they went to war. They did not get independence because of violence. They were given independence because of their technological feats of the Manhattan Project.
“They used the Manhattan Project to negotiate with the other parts of the world and the United Nations, led by America, granted them independence. It is not about having your country, but how do you manage your country. One per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing,” he said.
