IPOB PRESS RELEASE | May 23, 2018
The worldwide family of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) condemn in the strongest possible terms the reported deaths of 8 Biafra Independence Movement (BIM) activists and illegal detention of 206 others in Enugu during a gathering to commemorate 22 years of the founding of MASSOB. This is another atrocity in a long list of shameful atrocities committed by predominately Hausa Fulani staffed Nigerian Army. That this level of brutality is not receiving the desired media attention and condemnation is indicative of the times we now live in where life has become so cheap that deaths of activists is now seen as routine.
There remains only two constituencies to blame for this, Ohaneze Ndigbo and Igbo governors. Their repeated silence over the slaughter of their own people makes them an accomplice after the fact. Those agitators romancing with Arewa politicians by night but jump up during the day to shout Biafra must cover their faces in shame. Their duplicitous character will never endear them to the oppressor.
We are asking the Nigerian Government to focus their military hardware and firepower on Fulani terror herdsmen in Benue and other Northern terrorist groups active in the North Eastern part of Nigeria. The senseless killings of unarmed Biafra agitators must stop because it will only breed more die hard activists that may choose to abandon the non-violence stance of IPOB. One day, violence will surely beget violence if this ongoing anti-Biafra persecution is not stopped.
Nigeria will have no one but itself to blame when eventually that Pandora’s box they have been forcing is finally opened. The world cannot continue to feign ignorance of the fact that innocent unarmed Biafrans are being slaughtered on a daily basis like cattle by Northern Nigeria troops stationed in Biafraland. The day this sustained level of brutality will drive splinter groups to take up arms against the Nigerian state, architects of these massacres should not say they were not warned.
Self-determination is part and parcel of the Nigerian law. There is nothing illegal about secession in any of the laws in Nigeria. These killings must stop now or else we embark on a slippery slope to anarchy which IPOB may not be able to control. All Biafra detainees must be released.
COMRADE EMMA POWERFUL MEDIA AND PUBLICITY SECRETARY FOR IPOB.
