Olawepo-Hashim: Southeast youths should embrace ANN
http://thenationonlineng.net/olawepo-hashim-southeast-youths-should-embrace-ann/

A Presidential aspirant on the platform of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has urged Southeast youths to renew their revolutionary instincts, which they displayed in the pre-independence days to rescue Nigeria in next year’s elections.

Olawepo-Hashim, who addressed members of the ANN at the party secretariat in Abakalili, Ebonyi State capital, and at a youth rally in Afikpo, said the youths must re-enact the revolutionary instincts of Osita Agunna, who led the Zikist Movement to deliver a deadly blow to the colonialists during the independence struggles.

The rally in Afikpo involved a four kilometre trek from the Market Square where Olawepo-Hashim commissioned a constituency project executed by Maria Ude, a member of Ebonyi State House of Assembly to the community field.

Olawepo-Hashim said: “The Eastern Region has produced real committed leaders who have displayed the spirit of self service and selflessness which contributed to the victory in the war against colonial rule. It is that spirit that is lacking in Nigeria now

“When Nigeria was going to get out of colonial rule, young men and women in the East gathered together like this and called for a new revolution in the way the war against colonial rule was being prosecuted.

“I am talking of people like Osita Agunna, who under the Zikist Movement in 1946 issued out ‘A call for Revolution.’ And that call inspired the coal miners in Enugu whose devastating strike to the heart of colonial order shook the colonialists to their very foundation. From 1949, after the coal miners’ strike, the struggle for colonial rule took a new dimension.

“From time immemorial, this region has produced fighters for freedom and liberty that sprang from young people who had a vision of freedom, people like Monkwugo Okoye, these are people who fought for the independence of this country.”