Pro-Biafra group, Indigenous People of Biafra, (IPOB), has cried out to the whole world that it is not a terrorist organisation as the Department of State Services (DSS) and the President Muhammadu Buhari led Federal Government, Ohanaeze and other Igbo elites are trying to portray them in the eyes of the public.
Reacting to a media statement credited to DSS, IPOB spokesmen, Barr. Emma Mmezu and Dr. Clifford Iroanya, respectively, pointed out that tagging IPOB a criminal and terrorist organisation is the handiwork of the President and the DSS to give the impression that IPOB is destructive like other freedom fighters.
IPOB, in a statement, yesterday, jointly signed by Emma Mmezu and Clifford Iroanya, accused President Buhari of masterminding the smear campaign against the pro-Biafra group, saying the President has failed in this attempt.
The group, in the statement titled; “Another bungled attempt by Muhammadu Buhari and his DSS to criminalise Biafrans and brand IPOB a terrorist organisation,” alleged that DSS, in its determined effort to criminalise the group, sent out a false alarm to the media and the Nigerian public, claiming that it had arrested one Chidiebere Onwudiwe, a graduate of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering on June 22, further saying that he was a known member of IPOB.
Sunday Telegraph reports that the alleged DSS statement reportedly claimed that “Mr. Onwudiwe and his associates within and outside the country, were planning to carry out coordinated attacks against religious bodies/edifices, police check points and the Computer Village in Ikeja, Lagos State, with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDS)” and that “The suspect was apprehended while making logistics supplies for their nefarious plan.”
But Mmezu and Iroanya, in their statement, said 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 socalled Fulani herdsmen.
“Up till today, the DSS has maintained stoic silence on the killings at 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 22,” the group alleged.
They also accused the DSS of 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,” the group stated.
IPOB further said that the fact that DSS even contemplated insinuating that Computer Village, “mostly owned by Biafrans of Igbo extraction, is a target for such an attack exposes the idiocy of those that run Buhari’s Secret Police.
“If Buhari and his Northern killer Squads like, let them kidnap, kill, torture and threaten as many Biafrans as they like, but one thing they can never succeed in doing is to weaken our resolve to leave the Satanic Lugardian contraption called Nigeria,” the group said in the statement.
They also accused the Igbo elites (described as Abuja political job seekers) of colluding with the Buhari administration in the clamp down on Biafrans, saying members of Ohanaeze Ndigbo are being used to get information on how to arrest Biafrans and tag IPOB a violent group.
It noted that no prominent Yoruba or Hausa-Fulani person has ever labelled IPOB violent but Ohaneze, saying in their desire to please their Arewa masters, they have variously granted interviews where they explicitly implied that IPOB, under the leadership of Nnamdi Kanu, is violent.
“They have been doing their master’s bidding out of envy, greed and jealousy because the steadfastness of IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, has exposed the charade and sell-out that these men have become,” the statement stressed.
