A Nigerian lady caused a stir of Twitter after highlighting some of the reasons why she “will never vote an Igbo person” to be the president of Nigeria.
The lady, identified as Farida Kabir, gave her reasons in a series of tweets via her Twitter page, @reedahkh, in response to a question on 2023 presidential election posed by the former Director-General of Bureau of Public Service Reform, Dr. Joe Abah.
Abah had taken to his verified Twitter handle to call for a debate on why Nigerians think the Igbos should not be considered for the presidency in 2023.
He tweeted:
“I am minded to support #IgboPresidency2023 in ALL political parties. It is not because I am Igbo but because I am Nigerian. It is about fairness and inclusion. Can you give me any reason why I shouldn’t? Let’s have a debate.”
In her reaction, Farida said though she is in support of Abah’s stance based on equity and fairness, she would never vote an Igbo person to govern her.
She tweeted:
“Dr Joe I support this motion of yours, being fair and equitable but I will tell you for sure that I will never vote an Igbo person to govern me and I’ll tell you why. 1. We can’t deny the fact that Igbo people openly undermine us at every opportunity they get.
“They call us illiterates, almajiris, the problem of Nigeria etc 2. Igbo people never miss an opportunity to swindle us because they feel we are retards and don’t know value of our hard earned money
“3. Don’t forget the pains of the civil war and how it was narrated to us. How Kaduna Nzeogwu bit the hand that fed him, and how our leaders were targeted and killed in the most gruesome way
“I can tell you for a fact that a lot of northerners share this same view as mine. What I will advice Ndi Igbo to start doing is working on how to build new bridges to connect us. They have long since burnt the whole damn city down including any path to alliance.
“Until I see a conscious and genuine effort from Ndi Igbo on peaceful coexistence and respect for our differences, I will never ever cast my vote for them and I’ll make sure my people don’t either. This doesn’t affect my personal relationship with the few that I know in anyway.
“But this is the reality for me and many of my kindred. A snake can only give birth to long things and a fowl that is disobedient will learn obedience in a cooking pot.”
Her tweets have sparked a fresh debate about the 1967 Nigerian civil war among Twitter users following Faridah’s claim that the war left the Northerners in pain.
A Twitter user @Marrgarritah wrote:
“It appears the tribes were told different stories of what happened in the Civil War.”
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Another twitter user wrote:
The fact that a Northerner came on Twitter to claim that the North were victims of the Nigerian Civil War not the Igbos is perhaps the most mischievous attempt at rewriting history that I’ve ever witnessed.
I don’t blame her though, I mean, education is haram innit? https://t.co/XHBZJXH3Ye
— FAVOUR ONYEOZIRI (@FOnyeoziri) October 16, 2019
MArk AMaza tweeted:
Pains of the civil war? I didn’t know the civil war was fought in the North. https://t.co/TJh2lX7whN
— Mark Amaza (@amasonic) October 15, 2019
He added:
“For the actions of <20 military officers, officers from the SE were killed in huge numbers in a counter-coup; Igbo people across the North were killed in pogroms; their region suffered the most in the civil war & you still talk about pains of the civil war?”
“You want the SE to build bridges when at the slightest ‘provocation’, they still get attacked in the North? You keep using Jan 15, 1966 to justify a never-ending bigotry. At what point will you feel they have paid penance enough?”
@Stephie_coco also tweeted:
Can we dead this FALSE narrative that Northerners survived or have PTSD from the civil war?Same civil war, the Nigerian army made up mostly of Northerners used tools such as starvation, disemboweling of pregnant Igbo women to win. Don’t talk about pains you have no idea of! https://t.co/HFpZwOiL5x
— Igbo First! (@stephie_coco) October 16, 2019
