Over 4000 other defenseless Igbo people residing in the North were also butchered by northern Muslims’ backed Islamic Boko Haram terrorists between 2009 and 2014.
Since 2015, the Islamic Fulani terrorists have butchered not less than 70 rural Igbo citizens with the highest casualties being the Nimbo massacre of 2016 in Enugu State with at least 48 deaths.
In spite of these chilling and unprovoked butcheries directed at Igbo People, Igbo People have never retaliated or taken up arms till date. They have continued to survive, expand, develop, tolerate, accommodate and feed themselves till date.
The Igbo population which its Hausa-Fulani butchers has been seeking to annihilate and wipe off the world map since 1945 have continued to grow and expand hitting over 40million population and found in over 88 countries of the world.
Till date, Igbo People are most peaceful, nonviolent, friendly and harmless tribe in Nigeria; despite decades of butchery and annihilative policies ceaselessly directed at the race.
In spite of the butcheries, tribulations and enforced socio-economic retardations, Igbo Society and its People have lowest poverty rate and highest GDP per capita in Nigeria today.
The bitter lesson to be learnt by the present Buhari Government in its failed attempts to crush Igbo’s anti structural and physical nonviolent campaigns is that the Igbo People must always survive and exercise their sacred rights as clearly enshrined in Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution and allied regional and international enactments.
It is also an act of impossibility to beat a child and ask him or her not to cry. There must be total reversal of anti-Igbo structural and physical annihilative policies in Nigeria particularly under the present Buhari Administration.
CHALLENGES FACING LEADERSHIP OF IPOB
As earlier stated, we at Intersociety have nothing to celebrate over conditional freedom granted to Citizen Nnamdi Kanu.
Rather we see it as the beginning of all beginnings and a wakeup call. The conditional freedom has also thrown up more challenges and placed them at the doorsteps of the leadership of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
One of the challenges is imminent dangers in rumored or planned abandonment (i.e. in terms of their personal and family basic upkeep or welfare and proactive legal representations and facilitation of allied basic logistics) of IPOB’s detained comrades-in-aluta; namely: David Nwawusisi, Benjamin Madubugwu, Chidiebere Onwudiwe, Bright Chimezie and newest arrestee (George Onyeibe) and other detainees across the country held in connection with Pro Biafra Campaign in Nigeria.
The case of Mr. Bright Chimezie is most pathetic. He has not been seen privately or publicly since 16th September 2016 when he was arrested by Police in Akwa Ibom State and handed over to SSS in the State. He has been detained without trial for seven months and nobody knows whether he is dead or alive in SSS custody till date.
Therefore, our firm position and advice to IPOB stems from what we have been reading on social media where a section of IPOB activists/officials seemed to have lost direction in their nonviolent self-determination campaigns and resorted to use of abusive and uncouth words such as “traitors”, “saboteurs”, “criminals”, and other forms of campaign of calumny against some of their key officials and colleagues including some of the their detained colleagues mentioned above.
We strongly and conscientiously advise Citizen Kanu and his IPOB not to make the costly mistake of abandoning its comrades-in-aluta at this particular point in time.
Citizen Nnamdi Kanu must seek appropriate clarifications from his lawyers and nuclear family on the true state of things during his unjustifiable incarceration so as to get things right and put his group’s house in order to avoid making a grave mistake including abandoning his detained comrades and the 370 wounded and 270 slain others.
Most importantly, the second challenge facing Citizen Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB is the posthumous fate of 270 slain members of IPOB and other Pro Biafra movements. It is the inexcusable and moral duty of Citizen Kanu and his IPOB to ensure at all times that their slain comrades did not die in vain.
They must not be seen or treated as sacrificial lambs, deserving no posthumous justice and remedies. Accountability and justice for their premeditated murders are as important as the IPOB’s self-determination or Pro Biafra campaigns.
The leadership of IPOB must learn from the centuries old oral and scientific account of ghost or soul haunting by pre-colonial Igbo chiefs (ndi mgburuchi); numbering 75, who were forcibly sold into slavery in faraway Simons Island in present day State of Georgia in USA in May 1803 at average of $100 each. Because of their unquenchable angers and vows they made before committing mass suicide by diving into the Island’s creek, their souls wreaked havoc for centuries until they were appeased and pacified by the Nri Kingdom Dynasty delegation as recently as 2012.
In the case of 270 slain IPOB members and other Pro Biafra Campaigners, they must not be abandoned until their killers are brought to justice locally, nationally, regionally or internationally.
Emeka Umeagbalasi, Board Chairman
Mobile Line: +2348174090052
Obianuju Joy Igboeli, Esq.
Head, Civil Liberties & Rule of Law Program
Chinwe Umeche, Esq.
Head, Democracy & Good Governance Program
Florence C. Akubilo, Esq.
Head, Campaign & Publicity Department
Contact: International Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law
Phone Lines: +2348182411462, +2349063500218
Email: info@intersociety-ng.org
Website: www.intersociety-ng.org
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