The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has said that the agitations for the Republic of Biafra cannot be compromised for Nigerian politics.
According to the proscribed group’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, Biafra agitation is still intact and nothing would change the group’s resolve towards the fight to achieve Biafra freedom through peaceful non-violent globally accepted practices.
Powerful was responding to a statement by an Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi that IPOB agitation had slowed down in the South East since Mr Peter Obi picked the presidential ticket of Labour Party. But the group said Gumi’s comments showed his level of “cluelessness” and how “uninformed” he is about the IPOB movement and its activities.
The statement reads: “IPOB does not engage with any shambolic selection process they call ‘Nigeria election’ and we are not interested in their fraudulent ways of selecting the president of Nigeria because we do not believe in Nigeria anymore.
“We have said it before now that IPOB does not know Peter Obi and Peter Obi does not know IPOB. If Peter Obi knows IPOB, its aims and objectives, he wouldn’t have come out in the first place to contest to waste his wealth and vast knowledge, talent and wisdom endowed with experience which God Almighty gave and blessed Biafrans with, in the Zoological Republic.
“Therefore, for Peter Obi to have come out to contest for Nigeria president is an indication that he is not on the same page with IPOB and people should not equate him with IPOB agenda, they can say any other thing about him, not Biafra agitation.
“We can never slow down agitation until Biafra comes. Any Biafran who comes out and joins the election process under Nigeria has publicly proven that he or she is not in the same ideology with IPOB”.
In 2017, the Federal Government gazetted an order of the Federal High Court in Abuja which proscribed IPOB and designated it as a terrorist organisation. The gazetting was part of the requirements imposed on the Federal Government by the court to finalise the proscription of the group.
