From Magnus Eze, Enugu
The Ohaneze Ndigbo Worldwide has told the Nigerian Army authorities to desist from profiling the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
The apex Igbo body reiterated that a political solution remains the best approach to redress the case between the Federal Government and the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu.
Ohaneze was reacting to the remarks made by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Faruk Yahaya, wherein he warned that “IPOB, Eastern Security Network (ESN), or any other group or individuals have no constitutional backing to threaten Nigeria’s integrity.”
Yahaya had emphasised that “elections or no elections, neither IPOB, ESN nor any other group or individuals should threaten the integrity of this Nation as enshrined in the Constitution of Nigeria.”
Ohaneze said the army chief issued the warning at an army event in Abuja, on Monday, barely 72 hours after five members of the IPOB were shot dead in Osusu, Aba, Abia State, last Friday.
In a statement by Ohaneze spokesman, Dr. Alex Ogbonnia, the group regretted that the Aba shooting happened while IPOB members were on a peaceful procession across the commercial city.
He decried the trivialisation of the onslaught on the IPOB members by the Abia State Commissioner of Police, Mustapha Mohammed Bala, who claimed that “on 31/03/2023, at about 11.45hours, policemen on confidence building patrol/show of force within Aba metropolis came under attack by the proscribed IPOB/ESN members.”
Bala further claimed that “they were armed with petrol bombs, machetes, battle axes and other dangerous weapons,” adding that “the attack was repelled by the police operatives with minimal casualties, while the majority of the hoodlums scampered for safety.”
Ohaneze said its findings revealed that “some residents, armed with video evidence, informed that the group was protesting peacefully against the continued detention of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, without disturbance before they were shot at.”
It described as most appalling, the branding of IPOB men as “hoodlums” by the Abia commissioner of police, and most unconscionable to view the death of five IPOB members as “minimal casualties.”
Ohaneze disclosed that the one-week mourning of the slain five IPOB members was still on, when the Chief of Army Staff began profiling IPOB. Citing what former president Olusegun Obasanjo said recently in Awka, Anambra State, during the first year in office celebration of Governor Chukwuka Soludo, Ohaneze warned against the continued conspiracy against the Igbo of South East, Nigeria.
Obasanjo, who called it “Igbophobia,” had contended that “it would not mean well for the unity and development of the country.”
Ohaneze said every knowledgeable Nigerian knows that the current political travails in Nigeria are rooted in Igbophobia. The backwardness and poverty that have become the character of Nigeria is the manifestation of Igbophobia or the orchestrated marginalisation and alienation of the Igbo from the centres of power.
It declared that Nigeria, at the moment, is at a critical juncture with two major options: truth and progress on one hand or falsity and backwardness, poverty and political travails on the other.
“While we are still in one week mourning and in sackcloth for the five boys or the “minimal casualty” by Mustapha Mohammed Bala boys at Aba during a peaceful protest for the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, another Yakub Yahaya is using his office to issue a profiling threat to the IPOB. Ohanaeze Ndigbo has repeatedly called for a political solution in resolving the IPOB matter and that the adoption of extra judicial minimal casualties on a daily basis against the IPOB by the Nigerian security operatives is heinous, savage, unethical, antithetical to democratic norms and, of course, far from the solution.
“Even when the previous calls on the Presidency appear to have fallen on deaf ears, we still remind President Muhammadu Buhari, and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to rein in the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Yakub Yahaya, from his selective threat to the IPOB. Such selective profiling is enough, considering the hundreds of lives that have been neutralised through the Bala concept of minimal casualties,” Ohanaeze lamented.