By Isaac Ojo
A renowned human rights lawyer, Barr. Ifeanyi Ejiofor has called on Ndigbo to reject any call to boycott the 2027 general elections.
Barr Ejiofor in a press statement made available to journalists pointed out that there is an unsettling pattern in the rhetoric presently being introduced into our political space.
He said that the rhetoric packaged as harmless directives, civil disobedience or principled protest, but carrying within it the unmistakable seeds of consequences far more devastating than the promoters may wish the people to contemplate.
Barr Ejiofor said that his intervention is not about politics, but the preservation of Ala-Igbo and the protection of the lives, livelihoods and hard-earned peace of Igbo people.
“Any directive advocating an electoral boycott, under whatever guise or euphemism it may be presented, must be unequivocally rejected. We must not permit the reopening of wounds that have taken enormous sacrifices to heal.
“We have witnessed, at great cost, what happens when political grievances are converted into rigid commands and when ordinary people are compelled to pay the ultimate price for decisions taken by those who are themselves safely removed from the consequences.
“We must therefore reject, with every sense of responsibility, any attempt to turn electoral participation into an offence against the collective interest of our people.
“Indeed, what greater irony could there be than to surrender our political voice in the name of defending our people, only to discover that the silence created by such surrender has become the very instrument through which our collective interests are diminished! Perhaps the ballot box is now being treated as the enemy, while political irrelevance is being advertised as victory.” The legal luminary insisted.
Barr Ejiofor said emphatically that Ndigbo must be wiser noting that there are legitimate constitutional, judicial, political and democratic channels through which grievances can be ventilated and remedies pursued .
“I therefore condemn, in its entirety, every directive calculated to induce electoral boycott in Ala-Igbo, particularly where such directives are issued without transparent accountability to the people who will ultimately bear the consequences.
“Those who are gathering the storm should understand that Ala-Igbo is no longer available for experimentation with destructive political theories. Our people have endured enough. Our communities have suffered enough. Our economy has paid enough. And our children deserve a future that is not perpetually held hostage by the political calculations of faceless actors.
“Ndị Igbo must reject every attempt to drag them backwards. We cannot continue to pursue political objectives through strategies whose collateral consequences are borne almost exclusively by the very people we claim to defend.
“A people do not preserve their homeland by rendering it ungovernable; they preserve it by protecting its peace, strengthening its institutions and relentlessly pursuing justice through every legitimate avenue available to them…….” Barr Ejiofor asserted. END
2027: Reject calls to boycott election, Human Rights lawyer tells Ndigbo
