We accept Oba Akiolu’s retraction – Ohanaeze

As the threat by the Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Akiolu, to Igbo and non-indigenes living in Lagos to vote for the Lagos State governorship of the All Pro­gressives Congress (APC), Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode or drown in the lagoon, contin­ues to generate reactions, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo has sued for peace. The group said it was satisfied by the Lagos monarch retraction.

Chairman of the Caretaker Committee, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Ralph Obioha, in a state­ment called on those who felt offended by the Oba’s utter­ances to put the incident behind them, especially as the Oba had assured that it would never happen again.

The group, in the wake of the comment, said it had “carefully viewed the tape and came to the painful conclusion that part of what had ordinarily been a convivial gathering of host and visitors contained a regrettable portion where the Oba was in­deed, issuing an unacceptable threat that if those who were with him at that gathering did not secure the Igbo support for the Oba’s preferred candidate, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, Igbo will drown in the lagoon. All threats, no matter how they were issued, are offensive to any and all parties.

“We sought an immediate clarification of the incident and we received a prompt as­surance from the palace that the Oba did not curse the Igbo and went further to explain the usage of lagoon drowning as only a metaphoric injunction traditionally adopted by La­gosians in their expression of expected behavior and per­formance.