Biafra Day Massacre: Army should produce weapons seized from agitators - IPOB

13-06-2016

As controversies con­tinue to trail the kill­ing of protesters on May 30, 2016 in the South East and South-South, the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) has challenged the Nigerian Army to produce weapons allegedly seized from the agitators.

The group particularly asked the Army to publicly display the purported weap­ons it seized from the Biafra agitators who were killed in Onitsha on the said day.

Its reaction was prompt­ed by the claims of the Army that soldiers and other se­curity operatives used max­imum force against the ag­itators because they were armed.

 The Army was defend­ing itself against the Am­nesty International report that soldiers committed war crimes by killing un­armed Biafran agitators in Onitsha and Asaba during the Biafra Day celebration.

In a statement by its spokespersons, Mr. Clif­ford Iroanya and Mr. Emma Nmezu, IPOB said that the claims by the Army that it killed the agitators because they were violent were only face-saving and lacked any proof.

IPOB challenged the Army to produce the weapons seized from the agitators to prove its case.

The statement read in part: “To justify the use of live am­munition on Biafrans, the Army spokesman, one Col. Gambo claimed that Biafrans ‘employed firearms, crude weapons as well as other vola­tile cocktails such as acid and dynamites.’

“Where are the arms and ammunition that the Army re­covered from the ‘violent Bia­frans’?

“Is the Army actually re­ferring to the acid which they poured on the bodies of dead Biafrans as they lay in mass graves which was dug at the cemetery inside Onitsha Army Barracks?

“Is the Army aware that information leaked through somebody who supervised the burial of over 100 dead bod­ies of Biafrans in mass graves inside the Onitsha Army Bar­racks?

“How can the Nigerian Army explain how people who were murdered in their sleep on the night of May 29th sud­denly became violent? How can someone be sleeping and be protesting at the same time?

“Col. Gambo, in reference to the damning report, averred that Amnesty ‘have decided to inundate the general pub­lic with an anecdote of unver­ified narratives in order to dis­credit the Nigerian Army in the course of carrying out its constitutional duties despite the inexplicable premeditated and unprovoked attacks in the hands of the violent pro-Bia­fran mob.’

“Also, in citing legal sup­port for their heinous crime, Col. Gambo stated that: ‘The Nigerian Army, in syner­gy with other security agen­cies under its constitutional mandates for Military Aid to Civil Authority (MACA) and Military Aid to Civil Power (MACP) acted responsive­ly in order to de-escalate the deteriorating security scenar­io in-situ.’

“IPOB wishes to state cate­gorically that there is no place in the 320 sections and seven schedules of the constitution of Nigeria where the Army is empowered to shoot at un­armed peaceful civilians, espe­cially those who are sleeping,” IPOB said.

MASSOB demands conduct of Anambra, Imo Senatorial rerun polls

Meanwhile, the Move­ment for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has given a one-month ultimatum to the In­dependent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to fix a date for the conduct of the two senatorial elections in Anam­bra Central (Anambra State) and Okigwe Senatorial zones in Imo State.

The group, in a statement issued in Onitsha by its lead­er, Comrade Uchenna Madu, said that it is giving INEC till July 15, 2016 to fix dates for the two elections, stressing that it is wading into the matter as a major player in the affairs of the South East zone.

Madu described the con­tinued delay of the elections as a deliberate attempt to expand the widening marginalisation of the zone in Nigeria, adding that MASSOB has uncovered another plot to politically side­line Ndigbo in Nigerian poli­tics by crookedly reducing the number of Igbo senators from 15 to 13.

According to him, “this calculated and deliberate act of political abortion is in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to sideline Ndigbo. One year af­ter the 2015 general elections that produced complete num­ber of senators from each ge­opolitical zones, two senato­rial seats of Anambra central zone and Okigwe zone remain vacant in the upper legislative chamber.”

The MASSOB leader de­clared that it is no longer ac­ceptable to it as a pro-Igbo group that South East zone has the least number of sena­torial representatives with only 15 while other zones like the North East zone has 21 sena­torial representative, insisting that it is another gross polit­ical manipulation against the Ndigbo.