Igbo youths declining military recruitment due to discrimination – Women Assembly

Monday, April 28, 2025 - The National President of Igbo Women Assembly, IWA, Nneka Chimezie has blamed alleged marginalization of Igbos in Nigeria and delayed promotions of Igbo officers in the military for the low interests being recorded in military recruitment among Igbo youths.

She said that the Igbos have been marginalized in key appointments, just as the zone is yet to produce the President of the country since the 1966 Coup that claimed the life of General Aguiyi Ironsi.

Nneka Chimezie stated this in response to a recent statement credited to the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa about security situation in the South East.

Her words: “They have been denied their rightful promotion, especially those in the security agencies. And that’s part of the reasons Igbo youths are losing interest in military recruitments.”

“They have refused to join the military and even the police because they hardly get promoted unlike their colleagues from other tribes.”

“In other federal establishments, the story is the same. The quota of the South East is always shortchanged.

“So, these are the things these children are protesting. When they graduate from school like their fellow youths from other tribes, they don’t get equal opportunities for employment.

“That’s what they are protesting because they believe that they are not included in the Nigeria structure. They feel unjustly excluded”, she alleged.

The Igbo Women Assembly President, who said that Igbo youths want inclusion and full integration into the Nigeria system, declared that Igbo Women would no longer shy away from the plight of Igbo youths children.

She also criticised the high number of security check points on roads in the South East, alleging that high level of extortion was done at those points, even as as she lamented that youths in some Igbo communities migrated away from their homes in fear of insecurity.

She urged the Federal government to engage the members of Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, in a dialogue to listen to their grievances, saying that if repentant Boko Haram members were released and given amnesty, there was nothing wrong in engaging IPOB in dialogue.