BIAFRA: IPOB Alleges Plot To Arrest, Execute Members
The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPO said, yesterday, its intelligence unit has uncovered plots by the Federal Government and security agencies to arrest and detain members across Biafraland.
The group alleged that the arrests would start today with the aim of actualising the goal of establishing the ‘Operation Python Dance’ across the South-East and South-South geopolitical zones.
A statement by the Media and Publicity Secretary of IPOB, Mr. Emma Powerful said security agents were ordered to eliminate where possible or detain where summary execution proves difficult and urged the people of Biafra to resist any unlawful arrest whatsoever.
Meanwhile, former minister of Finance, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, has faulted the prolonged detention of leader of IPOB and Director of Radio Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu. Dr. Kalu said denial of Kanu’s legal rights and writ requiring him to be brought before a judge to secure his release was wrong.
“Not according Kanu his due legal rights and fundamental habeas corpus is ‘criminal and judicial incompetence’ in the first instance.”
He, however, stated that Kanu and supporters “miscalculated the context of the agitation,” adding that, the civil war between 1967-1970 was fought “because of some circumstances that prevailed at that time.
“Igbo and other Nigerians went into the Biafran struggle by the inexorable force of the circumstances of the day.
Meanwhile, Kanu’s younger brother, Prince Emmanuel and a Chieftain of the All Progressives Alliance (APC), Chief Okey Nwagbara have commended businessman and former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu for visiting the IPOB leader in prison.
The former Abia governor had, at the weekend, visited Kanu. Thereafter, he told newsmen there was the possibility of brokering peace between the Federal Government and Kanu who he said gave the mandate to speak on his behalf.
Speaking on the visit Emmanuel said Kalu took a positive step by visiting his elder brother in the prison. “If he went to see Kanu, as his younger brother, as we heard in the news, it’s a welcome development and we commend him for that.
“For the fact that Kalu is the very first Igbo leader to have visited Kanu in prison, I appreciate him for that, for going to see him as a son of the soil. It is heartwarming to note that Kalu realised that Kanu is his younger brother. I’m also asking other Igbo leaders to emulate what Kalu had done because the fight is not Kanu’s fight, but for Ndigbo.”
In a related development, the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) has decried Justice Binta Nyako, of the Federal High Court, Abuja’s ruling that federal witnesses against Kanu and three others standing trial on treasonable felony, would be allowed to wear screens to give testimony.
CLO described the ruling as strange and a demonstration of the judge’s ignorance of constitutional law.
In a related development, the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) yesterday decried the ruling of the judge of a Federal High Court, Abuja, Justice Binta Nyako, that Kanu and 3 others standing trial before her court would be secretly tried for leading a self-determination struggle.
It described such ruling as strange and a demonstration of the judge’s ignorance of constitutional law.
In a press statement signed by the CLO Executive Director, Ibuchukwu Ezike, the organisation wondered when masquerades have become human beings in Nigeria to bear witnesses against living humans.
The CLO called on the Chief Justice of Nigeria as the head of the Judicial Arm of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to call Justice Nyako to order and remind her that there is a gross difference between a military dictatorship and democracy that Nigeria runs at the moment.
