The Ohanaeze Youth Council (OYC) has urged the Igbos in Nigeria’s South-East region to begin preparations for an “eventual exit” from Nigeria, citing decades of marginalisation, unresolved post-civil war injustices, insecurity, and what it termed the failure of the Nigerian state.
The call was contained in a New Year message issued on January 1, 2026, by the National President of the Ohanaeze Youth Council, Igboayaka Igboayaka
Igboayaka said the new year should mark a turning point for the Igbo people, stressing that “truth must be spoken plainly and without fear.”
“As we enter a new year, truth must be spoken plainly and without fear,” Igboayaka said, adding that “Ndigbo have prolonged their suffering in Nigeria like the Jews in Egypt.”
He urged Igbo people to “stop dying in Nigeria” and begin preparing “mentally, politically, economically, and diplomatically” for departure from what he described as a hostile system.
Igboayaka traced what he described as the marginalisation of Ndigbo to the aftermath of the 1967–1970 civil war, alleging that the reconciliation programme announced by the then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, amounted to continued punishment of the Igbo people.
He claimed that the post-war period was marked by economic dispossession, including the policy of returning £20 to Igbo citizens regardless of the amounts held in their bank accounts before the war.
According to him, the Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation (3Rs) programme “was never implemented in any part of Igboland or Biafra territory.”
The OYC president said the resurgence of pro-Biafra movements, from the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), was a direct consequence of unresolved injustices against Ndigbo.
“It did not arise out of hatred or rebellion for its own sake, but from decades of exclusion, broken promises, and denial of dignity,” he said.
He also condemned the arrest and continued detention of IPOB leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, describing it as an “extraordinary rendition” and a violation of international law.
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