Obi of Onitsha prays for peaceful, transparent election in 2023
Obi of Onitsha prays for a peaceful, transparent election in 2023
ONITSHA – The commercial City of Onitsha, Anambra State, was yesterday lockdown as the annual Ofala Festival of the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe took place in grand style.
Various traditional rulers across the country, including Anambra State, were also on the ground to witness the three-day events which kicked off on Friday, October 21 with a youth carnival organized by the Onitsha Youths Council, OYC.
The festival which continued today, October 23, as Azu-Ofala, is also being used to mark the 20th year reign of the Obi of Onitsha, who has described his reign as the traditional ruler of Onitsha as a journey of leadership change with the sole purpose of fast-forwarding an ancient traditional society to the 21st century.
In his Iru-Ofala royal message, Igwe Achebe charged the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC to ensure peaceful, free, fair, credible, and transparent elections in 2023 as according to him, INEC owes a huge duty to posterity to discharge its statutory functions faithfully and transparently.
, Achebe who is also the Chairman of the Anambra State Council of Traditional Rulers, as well as Chairman of the Southeast Council of Traditional rulers, noted that by so doing, the winner of the Presidential election would face the undaunting task of building a safe and united country that would provide editable opportunities for all citizens on line with the United Nations declaration of fundamental human rights.
According to the monarch, “Our country today appears to be in dire straight than at any other time since national independence, except for the three years of the civil war.”
“The biggest challenge of the nation today is insecurity which affects most parts of the country and disrupts every aspect of our public and private lives. The inability of farmers to harvest their crops due to terrorists and the conflicts between the farmers and herders are causing serious food inflation”.
” External debts have grown by more than ten folds since 2015 from $19.7 billion to $98.6 billion. Also, the scarcity of the USA dollars to meet corporate and private foreign obligations has driven the value of the naira to about 30% of its 2015 value and some forecasters are predicting a rate of $1/1000 by the end of the year”.
In his speech, Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra state who was physically present at the Ime Obi Palace to felicitate with Igwe Achebe warned criminals to leave Anambra state alone and relocate to other states if they must continue in crime or else they would be signing their death warrants.
