The threat credited to the Director of Research of Afenifere, Dr Akin Fapohunda, that the Igbo Nation could face a Rwanda-style ethnic cleansing should an Igboman win the presidential election in 2027 is a vindication of the call by the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, for a referendum in Nigeria.
This is the position of the Eastern Nigeria Development Association in a statement signed by its President, Dr Obinna Chukwunaru, made available to NewsNGR.
Chukwunaru said the statement was beyond a “marginal political commentary”, adding that it “represents a functional articulation of deep seated structural hostilities within the ruling establishment”. He said, “The timing of this provocative statement operates as a calculated psychological assault on Eastern Nigerians. It was intentionally delivered just days before the solemn global commemoration of the 1966 anti-Igbo pogroms and the subsequent genocidal civil war (1967–1970).
“By invoking frameworks of mass annihilation precisely when millions of Ndigbo mourn over three million lives lost to historic state sponsored violence, this discourse actively weaponizes historical trauma to enforce political subjugation through the explicit threat of renewed physical erasure.”
He expressed sadness that the federal government has not valued the assertion a threat enough to demand the arrest of Mr Fapohunda. He said the silence implied complicity.
According to him, “President Bola Tinubu’s refusal to arrest, investigate, or publicly denounce this overt threat of ethnic cleansing signals executive validation. Under international jurisprudence, when a sovereign state fails to penalize direct incitement to eliminate a protected group, it transitions from a passive observer to an active accomplice. This calculated silence converts democratic participation into an existential hazard for Ndigbo and Eastern Nigerians in general, proving that the contemporary state architecture remains indifferent to the targeted destruction of its Igbo citizens.”
The group said Fapohunda’s threat validated the alarms raised by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu regarding the vulnerability of Ndigbo within the current quasi-federal framework of Nigeria.
“The precise existential threats he forecast are now openly declared by political elites operating with total statutory impunity. This systemic vindication amplifies the legal and moral necessity for his immediate and unconditional release from his punitive life-sentence isolation at the Sokoto Correctional Centre. His ongoing detention far from his homeland represents a political weaponization of the judiciary designed to decapitate the voice of an endangered population,” the group said.
ENDA said a political entity that uses the explicit threat of a Rwanda-type genocide to maintain power cannot claim legitimacy as a modern nation-state. It said the structural architecture of Nigeria was broken since the catastrophic pogroms of 1966 for “failing to provide the primary goods of security, equity, and judicial neutrality to Eastern Nigerians and Ndigbo in particular”.
Quoting the group, “Under Article III of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, direct and public incitement to commit genocide is a distinct international crime, making the Nigerian state’s failure to prosecute an act of international law non compliance. Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) explicitly protects the right of all peoples to self-determination. This is supported by Article 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Nigeria has fully ratified, guaranteeing oppressed peoples the lawful right to free themselves from domination.”
The group said when peaceful democratic alignment “is met with threats of physical liquidation, the forced amalgamation of Nigeria ceases to be a viable political option and becomes an active security threat”, adding that, “This structural decay indicates that the impending collapse of the Nigerian state by 2027 is a predictable historical trajectory for a project that failed since 1966.”
ENDA therefore appealed to the United Nations Security Council, the African Union, and international defence observers to intervene immediately to protect the lives, properties, and economic investments of Ndigbo in Nigeria.
“The international community must move beyond Westphalian diplomatic deference and recognize Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s call for a peaceful, democratic referendum as the only rational, non-violent mechanism to avert an engineered humanitarian catastrophe and secure the self-determination and preservation of the peoples of Eastern Nigeria/Biafra,” it said.
Interrogating Fapohunda’s position
Checks show that Mr Fapohunda aired his opinion during an interview on Symfoni, an online TV station. He had said the closing ranks of Senator Musa Kwankwaso and Mr Peter Obi to possibly oust the Yoruba presidency would be disastrous.
Quoting him, “Obi/Kwankwaso winning will cause the greatest damage to the polity. Let’s not sugar-coat it; let’s go raw. What we have now is the turn of the South and South-West. If Obi and Kwankwaso are to obliterate the second term of the south, the war between the Yoruba and Igbos will go to the highest level: that the Igbo connived with the North to cut out Tinubu. But Tinubu is not performing. No sane Yoruba person will defend Tinubu.”
The Rwanda allusion
The Afenifere chieftain warned that the Igbo orchestrating Tinubu’s loss would be genocidal. “We will be playing with Rwanda between the Igbo and the Yoruba; that the Igbo will make efforts to uproot what is called the Yoruba prize! It is not deserving, but on the streets, people should think about the implications. I am worried about what will happen if an Obi gets northern support and forces out Tinubu for a second term which Yorubas wrongly, not on merit, believe it is their turn. Whatever you sow, you reap.”
How Igbos rejected Yoruba offer in 1959
The elder statesman traced the rift between the Yoruba and the Igbo to 1959 when Chief Obafemi Awolowo offered the Igbo to be finance minister, which Zik rejected and later aligned with the North to form the national government. “We have to go back to that history. If Zik rejected Awolowo then, we are now in 2026, and it takes an Obi to knock out Tinubu, it is a dangerous thing.”
Tinubu should step down
The Afenifere doyen advised President Tinubu to sacrifice his second-term ambition, and save Nigeria. According to him, “That is why many of us canvass that one term is enough for Tinubu. Leave honourably. Restructure Nigeria. October 1 is a good time where we focus on good governance. If we continue this way, people will still be talking on primordial sentiments. Let’s prevail on Tinubu to bring the temperature down. Let him do the Mandela card. From now up to October 1, let’s have the blueprint to restructure Nigeria into modules so that we don’t fight to finish to take over Abuja and be borrowing money to be awarding N16trn contracts.”
Ndigbo are entitled to presidency
He said the Igbo are legitimately entitled to become president of Nigeria. “Ndi Igbo are not getting one penny from Tinubu. Igbos want to award their own contracts if Fulani and Yoruba have done it; unless they are no longer Nigerian citizens. The damage Tinubu will do to Nigeria to make sure that the Igbo do not have a chance (to become president) will be too much. If he loses, there will be problems. If Obi wins the ticket, the Igbo have come, and they will be ruthless because for the first time, they have been angling for this power.”
Final appeal
“My appeal: Mr Tinubu, you have amassed all the arsenal of states to yourself. The next election should be modular: not one president again. Let Yoruba and others fight within themselves. On merit, APC government has run the country aground.”
“I will support the Igbo”
He however declared his support for an Igbo presidency. “I will support them. We have no mouth to talk when they come. North vs South is a fact. If North prevails and knocks Tinubu out, all the South will unite to say we have been let down, and the North is in control… And Yoruba, Igbo problem will emerge again in a ferocious manner.”
He told Tinubu to demystify the presidency in Abuja. “It’s a thief that can buy a presidential form with N100m, for a position that requires just a school certificate to occupy”.
