Umuahia — A veteran journalist and traditional ruler of Umuanyi autonomous community uturu, Abia State, Eze Uwadiegwu Ogbonnanya, has called on South/East governors and Ohanaeze Ndigbo to join the international community in mobilizing support for the Republic of Haiti following a devastation by two powerful earthquakes since January 12, 2010.

The royal father who made the call in Umuahia while commenting on the recent devastation in the island decried what he called the apparent lack of response by the African Union to aid the first black independent nation in the western hemisphere.

"It is very unfortunate that whereas the United States, Europe, Japan and China have been pushing aid and military men to rescue the people of Haiti, African countries have remained nonchalant," he regretted.

He therefore called on the President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Ambassador Ralph Uwechue, and the former Biafran leader, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, to lead a high powered delegation to the Republic of Haiti to commiserate with the people who accorded diplomatic recognition to the defunct Republic of Biafra in 1969.

The Haiti recognition of Biafra in 1969, he said, brought succour to millions of Ndigbo in the remaining months of the 30- month civil war.

Delving into history, the royal father further recalled that the people of Haiti are descendants of Igbo slaves who in 1804 successfully waged a war of independence, liberation and rebellion against their former French colonial masters and thus became the first independent black nation in the western Hemisphere.

The departing French colonizers he stated left Haiti impoverished as they did in the Republic of Guinea when the late President Sekou Toure secured independence and kicked against membership of the French Union for his country under the inspiration of late President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana in 1958.

Eze Ogbonnanya who was a combatant/intelligence personnel in the defunct Biafran Army noted that it was because of this historic link between the igbos and the people of Haiti that the former President Jean Claude Duvalier (Papa Doc) of Haiti in 1969 accorded diplomatic recognition to the defunct breakaway Biafra after late Presidents Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Houphet Boigny of Ivory Coast, Omar Bongo of Gabon and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia.

He also called on the Chairman of the southeast Forum of Traditional Rulers, HRH Eze Cletus Ilomuanya and other Chairmen of the other South-Eastern states Councils of Traditional Rulers to launch a nation-wide donation of at least N10 by every Igbo at home and in Diaspora for the reconstruction of the country's devastated infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water.

Apart from the Republic of Haiti, the royal father noted, other black republics in the Caribbean such as the Dominican, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Guadeloupe and other Hispanic Islands have large concentrations of Igbo slaves who were found very hard working by the French and other European slave masters for labour in the development of their rubber and sugar cane plantations.

This, he said accounted for the depopulation of the Igbo nation through the sale and exportation of more than 10 million Igbos to the western world during the 400 years duration of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

He therefore advised the Igbo nation to emulate the Yorubas who have continued to be identified with Cubans who are of Yoruba ancestry.

Similarly, he implored the Federal Government to lead other nations of the African Union to join the international community in the reconstruction of Haiti .

The Royal father also appealed to the United Nations, the United States and the interim President of Haiti to allow the former President, Jean Bertrand Aristide who is now on exile in South Africa to return to the country and contribute his quota to the reconstruction of the land of his birth.

According to him, the return to Haiti at this time by the Rev. Father- turned- politician, who is a renowned statesman, would go a long way to heal the wounds of the nation and suffering people of Haiti as well as enhance speedy national reconciliation.