*** SEYDGLE Urges Collective Southeast Action
A group known as Southeast Youths for Development and Good Leadership, (SEYDGLE) has commended Dr. Alex Chioma Otti, OFR, Executive Governor of Abia State, for his bold, humane, and statesmanlike decision to visit Mazi Nnamdi Kanu at the Sokoto Correctional Facility.
This was contained in a statement jointly signed by the Convener, SEYDGLE, Eze Chimezie Chukwuka and Co-convener, SEYDGLE,Comrade Nwarie Ugochukwu C.
This position was unanimously adopted following SEYDGLE’s end-of-year strategic meeting held on Wednesday at Panyu Hotel, Aba, Abia State, where members critically reviewed prevailing national developments affecting the Southeast and resolved, as a collective, to issue this public statement in the interest of justice, equity, and responsible leadership.
According to SEYDGLE, “This visit transcends symbolism. It is a clear signal that leadership can still be anchored on justice, empathy, and moral courage. At a moment when silence has become the preferred refuge of many political elites, Governor Otti chose presence. Amid relentless politicization and distortion of the issues surrounding the agitation in the Southeast, he chose the human face of governance and the justice imperative owed to a long-marginalized people.”
”SEYDGLE affirms that the agitation associated with Mazi Nnamdi Kanu must be situated within its historical and structural context. Regardless of divergent views on approach or expression, the grievance itself did not arise in a vacuum. It is the cumulative outcome of decades of systemic marginalisation, frustration, subjugation, and serial abandonment of the Southeast by the federal establishment, worsened by persistent deficits in regional leadership capacity and cohesion.
”We emphasize that no society resolves deep-seated injustices through spectacle or suppression. Durable peace and national cohesion are achieved when the state confronts root causes with sincerity: unequal development, exclusion from decision-making, economic strangulation, and the erosion of trust in public institutions. Addressing these failures, rather than criminalizing their symptoms, is the pathway to reconciliation, stability, and shared prosperity,” the group explained.
For the Igbo people, Governor Otti’s visit represents acknowledgment: an affirmation that their pain is seen and heard.
For Nigeria, it represents accountability: a reminder that governance must balance law with conscience and power with restraint.
For the future, it represents hope, that conversations around equity, fairness, and unity can finally be pursued with transparency rather than transactional politics.
Accordingly, “SEYDGLE calls on all Southeast Governors to replicate and institutionalize this approach by acting collectively and decisively to:
1. Engage federal authorities toward immediate de-escalation and constructive dialogue.
2. Work collaboratively for the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu through lawful and reconciliatory means.
3. Tackle the structural drivers of discontent—historic marginalisation, infrastructural neglect, and economic exclusion—through a united regional development agenda.
4. Replace silence with leadership and expediency with courage.
Leadership is not the art of avoiding difficult truths; it is the discipline of showing up when it matters. Governor Otti has shown up. History will remember who followed, and who chose indifference.
Justice has a voice. Sometimes, it begins with a simple visit.”
