Human rights lawyer Aloy Ejimakor has called on the federal government to provide job opportunities for the youths of the South-East Region at federal establishments like the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Nigeria Customs instead of complaining that the youths of the region are shunning enlistment in the Nigerian military.
Ejimakor stated this via his X. He cited a publication in the Vanguard of August 26, 2023, entitled “Murtala Muhammed Backed Coup Against Gowon For Appointing Igbo Man NNPC GM”. In the publication, a former minister of information, the late Chief Edwin Clark, was quoted as saying that one of the reasons for the overthrow of Gen Gowon was because he appointed one Engr Odo, a Kalabari man from Rivers State, as the General Manager of Nigerian National Oil Corporation (NNOC).
Vanguard had quoted Clark’s autobiography, where he wrote that, “One of the immediate causes for overthrowing Gen Gowon’s government was the appointment of Engr Odoh, a Kalabari man from Rivers State as the General Manager of Nigerian National Oil Corporation (NNOC), now NNPC. A section of members led by Brigadier Murtala Muhammed, Federal Commissioner for Communications, strongly objected to Odoh’s nomination because he was an Igbo man and a security risk.”
Reacting, Ejimakor alleged that, “The efforts to entice reluctant Igbo youths to join the Army should be passed around to agencies like FIRS, CBN, Customs, NNPC which hardly recruit Igbos since the end of the war in 1970, to the point that a government was violently overthrown in 1975 for appointing an Igbo as NNPC GM. Igbos have institutional memory of the official redlines drawn against them in Nigeria.”
