Biafra echoes at Chatham House

•As IPOB members disrupt Okorocha’s address

By Philip Nwosu

IMO State Governor, Ro­chas Okorocha was at Chatham House yesterday to speak on the importance of developing human capi­tal in Nigeria, but he was greeted with huge embar­rassment from members of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
Just as the governor mounted the podium to be­gins his address, an uniden­tified man within the audi­ence started to talk about Biafra and the silence of the governor and other Igbo elites in the government of President Muhammadu Bu­hari on IPOB’s struggle.
While some persons per­ceived to be government officials tried to stop him to allow Okorocha continue with his speech, another young man emerged from the audience and mounted the stage and displayed the flag of the defunct Biafran republic.
As the young man marched with the flag, oth­ers at the background were explaining the reason for their action in a harsh tone, saying “you are here to talk about what, while our people are being killed ev­eryday and nobody has said anything about it?”
At that moment, the young man already on the stage approached Okoro­cha with the Biafran flag, but was stopped again by some persons from the au­dience whom it was gath­ered, were government of­ficials, who had travelled with the governor to Lon­don.
The suspected IPOB members were eventually persuaded to leave the audi­torium before the governor continued with his on hu­man capital development in Nigeria and how it can be achieved.
He also discussed strate­gies of the rescue mission for addressing social chal­lenges and the role external partners can constructively play in assisting Nigeria in human capital develop­ment.
Okorocha’s free educa­tion programme from pri­mary to university level and his concerted effort at Hu­man Capital Development Initiatives in the state had occasioned the interest of the London based Chatham House to invite him to talk on the referenced topic.
The governor travelled with very few senior gov­ernment officials to witness the historic event and they are expected back to Nige­ria at the weekend.