Ohanaeze Ndigbo has elected George Obiozor as its new president-general.
Former Nigerian Ambassador to the United States Professor George Obiozor has been elected new President General of the pan Igbo socio-cultural group Ohanaeze Ndigbo.
He scored 304 votes to beat two other contestants to emerge the winner in a just-concluded election at the Dan Anyiam Stadium Owerri.
Dr Joe Nwaorgu and Prof Chidi Osuagwu had earlier pulled out of the election and said they would not be part of the process.
Present at the election were the Governors of Imo and Ebonyi State, Minister of Labour Chris Ngige, Minister of Science and technology Ogbonnaya Onu, Senator Andy Uba, former President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Gary Igariwe, Archbishop of the Enugu Province, Anglican Communion, Most Rev. Emmanuel Chukwuma and a host of other senators and lawmakers from the South-East and South-South.
The report, however, had it that other candidates for the position of the president-general boycotted the election.
It was gathered that one of the leading contestants for the post of secretary-general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Chuks Ibegbu, had announced his withdrawal from the election.
Ibegbu, who is the outgoing deputy national publicity secretary of the body, lamented that the election process was faulty and lacked proper democratic rules of engagement.
He said:
“Following obvious distortion of the proper democratic rules of engagement and feeling the pulse of the Igbo Nation, I hereby exclude myself from the Nwodo led Ohanaeze election.
“Though I purchased the nomination form at an unacceptable sum of N300,000, regrettably the process was full of manipulation and the outcome would not be acceptable to Ndigbo.”
Before the election and emerging president today, Professor Obiozor had emerged as a consensus candidate at Imeobi meeting convened by the Nwodo-led executive of Ohaneze Ndigbo, but his emergence was described as unconstitutional by some aspirants.
The 78-year-old professor was Nigeria’s ambassador to the United staStates tes from 2004 to 2008. He was also a former Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Former High Commissioner to Cyprus, and also former Nigeria’s former ambassador to Israel, from 1999 to 2003.
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