Group Calls For More Investment In Igbo Land

The need for synergy among various groups in Igbo land for the development and repositioning of the Igbo nation on the path of recovery and to harness socio-cultural benefits has been emphasized.

Arch-Bishop Isaac Nwaobia, made the call in Umuahia on Monday on the sidelines of a retreat, organized by “Igwebuike Alaigbo”, to find a lasting solution to many of the challenges that are facing ndi Igbo.

Arch-Bishop Nwaobia, who is the convener of Igwebuike Alaigbo said the aim of the retreat is to punch for sons and daughters of ndi Igbo to come home and invest in Igboland for the benefit of all.

The clergy identified insecurity as a major challenge in championing the course of encouraging ndi Igbo to invest at home. He said Igwebuike Alaigbo is poised to partner with political leaders to improve security in Alaigbo in order to attract investments.

He made it clear that Igwebuike Alaigbo has no political intensions and should not be thought as such, neither should politicians of Igbo extraction should not see them as political rivalries, rather partners in progress.

On his part, the leader of Igwebuike Alaigbo, Comrade Godson Ibeme-Umelo said the objective of the retreat was to pool resources together to see how the issues that have been bedeviling the people as an ethnic group can be tackled.

“We are here today to celebrate ourselves as Ndi Igbo. This retreat is meant to galvanize our intellect, our minds and energies to see how we can look into the issues that have been bedeviling our people as an ethnic group in Nigeria.”

“We want to see how and ways and means we can think through these issues which have threatened our sociality in Nigeria. We want to see how we can come up with recommendations on how to move forward.”

Comrade Godson added that another challenge of the Igbo nation is leadership which he said is not peculiar to Ndigbo. He opined that Ndigbo is Republican in and egalitarian in nature which made it difficult to always arrive at a consensus.

“We have had issues with leadership and it’s not peculiar to us as a people. You know, we are Republican and egalitarian and by the nature of our people it’s always difficult to arrive at a consensus. But that does not remove the fact that we are very intelligent people who understand the steps and know where they want to go.”

He pointed out that Igwebuike Alaigbo is not about looking for who will be the arrowhead of leadership, rather it would serve as a think tank to pool resources together to drive development.

“In this time, we are not looking at getting into a group, whereby we begin to think of who is going to be there as an arrowhead. We are trying to pull forces together, bring our energies together.This group is different in a way because it’s going to be a think tank where we can call for all the various groups to be able to think of how to move forward.”

The retreat brought together men and women from various states in the South East fro all walks of life including the clergy, Christian Association of Nigeria, security agencies, academia among others.