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The new President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Prof. George Obiozor, has revealed that a memo he wrote with late President of the Senate, Dr Chuba Okadigbo, led to the granting of presidential pardon and amnesty to late Emeka Ojukwu by former President Shehu Shagari in 1983.
Obiozor disclosed this in Enugu when he paid a courtesy visit to former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu.
Ojukwu, who was the leader of secessionist Biafra, fled to Ivory Coast and was granted asylum, after the government troops was about to take over the Biafran state, set up on May 30, 1967.
Accompanied by his Secretary-General and former Nigerian Ambassador to South Africa, Okey Emuche; and other executive members, Obiozor said: “I want to tell you something about my own feeling about the Igbos. We are a people of destiny, the similarity between Igbo spirit and that of the Jews is amazing to me; as an academician I wrote about it, read about it and as an Ambassador in Israel, I saw it happen. The greatest revenge against injustice is success.”
Obiozor, who later visited his predecessor, Chief John Nnia Nwodo said he had been working for Ndigbo, and did the negotiation to bring Ojukwu back to Nigeria from Ivory Coast.
“I wrote a memo with the late Dr Chuba Okadigbo to President Shehu Shagari in 1983 to plead with him to pardon and grant late Chief Emeka Ojukwu amnesty. We actually negotiated his return home from exile,” he said.