IPOB condemns arrest of its member in Lagos as terrorist

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) yesterday raised alarm on the fram­ing of its member, Chidiebere Onwudiwe, as a terrorist warn­ing on the consequences of lying against innocent group to score cheap publicity.

IPOB in a statement said the Federal Government and the Department of State Services (DSS) have once again failed in their plot to criminalise and brand the group’s members as terrorists.

The statement was signed by Barrister Emma Nmezu and Dr. Clifford Chukwuemeka Iroanya, both spokespersons for IPOB. The statement read in part: “Retired Major Gen­eral Muhammadu Buhari and his team have once again failed woefully in their spurious at­tempt at criminalizing Biafrans and branding the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) a terror­ist organization.”

While faulting the DSS state­ment to the public, the IPOB spokesmen said “first of all, let us just point out only two out of the several errors in this pack of lies from the DSS’ statement; (1) We are Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and NOT “Independent People of Biafra”.

“Even in the records of all the court cases concerning the ille­gal kidnapping and unconstitu­tional prosecution of our leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to which the DSS have b

een part of, there was no place where the word “INDEPENDENT” was used and (2) At which University in Nigeria can someone graduate in both Mechanical Engineer­ing and Chemical Engineering at the same time? Even in the more advanced countries it is very difficult to achieve such a feat not to talk of the Buhari’s run-down universities in Nige­ria.

’’It is laughable that the DSS is accusing IPOB of posing in­creasing threat to public peace while they have not made a sin­gle official statement concern­ing the mayhem and havoc be­ing exhibited everyday by Boko Haram and the so-called Fulani herdsmen. Up till today, the DSS has maintained stoic silence on the killings in Agatu and Nimbo.

“Perhaps, those killings do not pose threats to public peace be­cause the people killed were ‘in­fidels’ that deserve to die as they are not of the Hausa-Fulani Is­lamic blood. It is very interesting to know from the DSS that IPOB can now manufacture IEDs and Chidiebere was probably manu­facturing them in his sleep when DSS hooligans broke into his house and kidnapped him at about 2am on June 22nd, 2016. We want to tell the DSS that we know their objectives and every discerning mind knows them too.

“The DSS is trying as much as possible to tag IPOB a violent group. The questions we want to ask the DSS are: Do we cover our faces when we march on the streets around the world? We are registered at the UN, if we are a violent group won’t the UN know?

“Kidnapping people in the middle of the night, denying them access to food and water, legal and medical help in the hope of getting IPOB members to testify against the leader of IPOB will not work.”