Igala cultural boss warns his people against ethnic agenda
The Igala Cultural Development Association’s (ICDA) Chairman, Alhaji Abubakar Sadiq has warned his people from setting ethnic agenda and hyping any primordial cleavage that may affect the unity of Kogi State.
The ICDA Chairman, who was apparently referring to the “Igala Agenda” which is now being used by some “ethnic champions” in the Eastern Senatorial District of the State to de-campaign Governor Yahaya Bello, said it would be a disservice to the people as the Governor has done more for the kingdom than what the “so-called” Igala Governors that had ruled the State for 19 years could not do.
He said the Igala Agenda was purportedly set not for the development of the ancient kingdom, but for some selfish politicians in the area who have been milk-drying the State since it was created 27 years ago, to achieve their political aims through ethnic manipulation.
He thanked the Chief of Staff to the Kogi State Governor, Hon. Edward Onoja, for organising all the Governor’s political appointees from Igala Kingdom to agree in making the Igala House a befitting structure for the association’s activities.
The ICDA Chairman said every Igala person is automatically a member of ICDA, and the people in government at the Lugard House before the emergence of Governor Bello could not do anything to give the association a facelift.
“For many years we made requests to Governor Yahaya Bello’s predecessors in office to help us renovate our dilapidated Igala House, but it all fell on deaf ears. For 19 years, they could not raise a structure where Igala people could converge and discuss issues of progress in their land. This is to prove to all that the Igala agenda they are clamouring for is for political reason. It is detrimental to our progress and we will not subscribe to it,” he said.
Alhaji Sadiq said the objective of ICDA is to foster the development of Igala kingdom and to ensure the existence of peace and harmony between them and their neighbours.
The Chief of Staff, Hon. Onoja who earlier granted the request of the ICDA Chairman to renovate Igala House, assured that the Governor’s appointees who are members of ICDA “will pull their resources together to expand and renovate the Igala House in Anyigba, even though the Governor is not Igala he will do for the people what the past Governors of Igala extraction had failed to do. The appointees will prove to them what real governance is all about.”
He lambasted the former Governors of Kogi who believed so much in Igala/Dekina agenda but could not renovate the Igala House at Anyigba.
Onoja said the past leaders from Kogi East had the time, opportunity and resources to make their marks in Igala land but they didn’t do anything because they were not thinking of the people rather their own selfish agenda and how to perpetuate themselves in power in order to enrich their family with State’s fund and to oppress the masses.
He said the emergence of Yahaya Bello was divinely decreed to show the Igala people who their real enemies are.
Onoja also solved the ICDA’s mobility problem by ordering for a Sharon bus to be given to the Association on Tuesday, 3rd of April while promising that the appointees would work together to ensure that a 33-seater bus is donated to them.
He said the appointees would collectively make sacrificial donation that would lead to the renovation of the House before December.
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