crisis in the association. He advised them to humbly accept whatever decision that would emanate from the meeting.
“There is always misunderstanding. We should not kill ourselves. Be humble. It is humility that will help us resolve our crisis. Everybody has masters. Let us bring down ourselves. What are we fighting for? There is no issue on ground. The issue is stubbornness”, he said.
Speaking for the police, Ubani, said Agu’s gesture was a welcome development and appealed to the association to bury their hatchet and look for the way forward. He said since no election is totally free of hitches, Ohaneze should ask the outcome of the last poll in the interest of peace.
“Let us always emphasize on things that bind us instead of things that separate us. No elections are free and fair anywhere. It could only be violent-free. Every little flaw in the election should be ignored for a way forward”, he said.
Also the representative of the DSS, Okoye, said the crisis was the first thing that confronted him when he resumed at the state office as the Assistant Director, Metropolitan City.
He said: “Some rich Igbo refuse to join the Ohaneze all because of the conflict amidst them. It’s not all issues that the security agencies should interfere in. Even if there are challenges, look for a peaceful way to resolve it as a way forward.
“Other tribes such as Yoruba have their association but you don’t ever hear of them having issues. Work towards shifting the grounds just for the sake of peace. The tenure has a number of years which is already counting”.
At the end, representatives of the security agencies read their resolutions to the crowd. In the spirits of ensuring the peace, they upheld the election that produced Amaku.
They asked the Ohaneze Youth Council (OYC) and a splinter group, the Igbo Youth Council (IYC) to reunite. They also held that the state chairmen of Ohaneze Ndiigbo in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo and the two other Igbo-speaking parts of Delta and Rivers states should be automatic vice-presidents as recognised by Ohaneze National body.
The peacemakers advised states that are not members of Ohaneze to register with the body without cost and urged individual members, who are not part of their various communities to identify with their communities.
Opposition mounts. The decision of the peacemakers did not go down well with the party against the leadership of Amaku. Some of them accused the peacemakers of bias. They also argued that the peacemakers overstepped their bounds, adding that they had no right to issue orders about the Ohaneze leadership. According to them, only the Ohaneze national body with its headquarters in Enugu could decide the future of the association in Bayelsa.
Few days after the decisions, the national body reportedly sent a delegation to Bayelsa to look into the problems of the association in the state. They were said to have appointed a caretaker committee to take charge of the association and gave the committee three months to organise a fresh election.
They were said to have appointed Mr. Mark Nlem to lead the caretaker committee. When contacted, Nlem said: “We were given three months to conduct the election and the intervention of the security agencies and their resolutions at the reconciliation meeting cannot stand. It is only Igbo that can decide who leads them. So they want to make it transparent. If Amaku continues to parade himself as the President, he is impersonating”.
But Amaku insisted that the election that produced him was authentic and that he remained the leader of the Ohaneze in Bayelsa State.
