The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide says separatist agitations led by Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho would not have arisen but for the injustice in Nigeria.
The apex Igbo sociocultural organisation stated this in a Tuesday statement signed by its spokesman, Alex Ogbonnia.
Ohanaeze urged the Federal Government to display the same zeal with which it arrested Kanu and Igboho to check the activities of killer herdsmen and bandits.
The group said that Kanu and Igboho are venerated among their people because the people see them as fighting just causes.
“Nigerian security operatives have in recent time shown that they have teeth and can bite.
“The question on every mouth is whether they can apply similar zeal in treating the Boko Haram kingpins; Fulani herdsmen; the Northwest bandits, etc.
“The foregoing selective efficiency of the security operatives elicits the reason for the making of Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho.
“One of the departing admonitions of Pope John Paul II is: ‘if you want peace, then work for justice.’
“It is an age-old maxim founded on reason, experience and truth that the only way for peace to reign in society is for justice to be seen to be served to all.
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“We recall that Sunday Igboho emerged on the scene because he could not endure the daily menace of the Fulani herdsmen in the Yoruba localities for a very long time.
“The herdsmen would kill, maim and rape women at random. All entreaties to the presidency for swift action against the AK-47-wielding herdsmen appeared to fall on deaf ears.
“Then, Igboho, in a patriotic heroic zeal intervened to save the rural farmers, women and children from the daily menace of the herdsmen.
“There is no gainsaying the military operations against the Boko Haram in the Northeast of Nigeria but the rate at which the herdsmen destroy farm crops, attack villages, kill the indigenes and forcefully occupy their ancestral lands is most callous, unconscionable and condemnable.
“This is where the intervention of the presidency is most needed; and of course, the Igboho paradox,” Ohanaeze said.