Deborah Akinyosoye
Economic and business activities operated by Ndigbo are expected to shut down for three hours on Saturday, January 30, as Southeasterners engage in adoration and thanksgiving to God for the survival of Igbo during the civil war about 55 years ago.
The event tagged “World Igbo Day of Adoration and Thanksgiving,” being put together by Ohanaeze Ndigbo and Igbo religious leaders, would be held in all churches throughout Igboland and elsewhere.
Archbishop of Enugu Ecclesiastical Province (Anglican Communion), Rt Rev Sosthenus Eze, who addressed a press briefing in Enugu yesterday, said the day of prayer and thanksgiving had become important following the realisation that Ndigbo had not returned gratitude to God for surviving the three-year-old war that started in 1967 and ended in 1970.
“That war was planned to exterminate the Igbo nation completely, but we survived as a race, despite all that we passed through. In response to this, God has been speaking through various people about this. This burden has been shared and agreed upon.
“We know that it was not only the war that took place. Since the war, the Igbo man has been denied his place. His property was destroyed and his rights denied. Sometimes freedom is not achieved by war. It can be achieved by adoration and praise. The existence of Igboman is not by accident. God ordained it, and it is for the Nigerian people to allow for equal rights of all,” he said.
Flanked by the former Chairman of Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Bishop Obi Onubugu; former Bishop, Oji River Diocese (Anglican Communion), Rt Rev Amos Madu, and Archbishop of the Presbyterian Church, Enugu, Most Rev Ezichi Ituma, among others, Bishop Eze stated that Igbo would remain eternally grateful for the mercies of God.
Bishop Obi Onubugu, a former aide to the late Biafran warlord, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, who stated that he was 20 years old during that war, added that their survival was miraculous.