Group, ENDA’s President Laments Alleged Ethnic Threat, Says Presidential Silence Validates Kanu’s Call for Referendum

_Secular Advocacy TV News Desk _

The President of Eastern Nigeria Development Association (ENDA), Dr. Charles Obinna Chukwunaru has decried ethnic threats to Igbos in a statement alleging that the alleged remarks by Afenifere chieftain Akin Fapounda threatening violence against Igbo people if an Igbo candidate wins the 2027 presidential election constitute incitement to ethnic violence.

In the statement authored by ENDA President Charles Obinna Chukwunaru, PhD, the group said the comments, made days before the anniversary of the 1966 anti-Igbo pogroms, “weaponise historical trauma” and represent a failure of the state to protect citizens. The ENDA President further criticised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s office for not publicly condemning the remarks, arguing that the silence amounts to “executive validation.”

The group’s President emphasised that the incident validates long-standing warnings by IPOB leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu about the vulnerability of Ndigbo within Nigeria’s federal structure, and called for his immediate release. ENDA through its President Dr. Charles renewed its call for a “peaceful, democratic referendum” for Eastern Nigeria/Biafra, citing the UN Genocide Convention, ICCPR, ICESCR, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

ENDA also appealed to the UN Security Council, African Union, and international observers to intervene to protect Igbo lives and property.

Neither the Afenifere leadership nor the Presidency has publicly responded to the ENDA President’s statement as of this report.