Ohanaeze asks Buhari to caution Yahaya against alleged threat to IPOB  

Ohanaeze Ndigbo has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to rein in the Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen. Yakubu Yahaya, from his alleged selective threat to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

The apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation reiterated its earlier stance for political solution to the IPOB matter, stressing that adoption of extra-judicial minimal casualties on a daily basis against IPOB by the Nigerian security operatives is heinous, cruel, unethical, antithetical to democratic norms and, of course, far from the solution.

Lt. Gen. Yahaya had, on Monday, warned that IPOB, Eastern Security Network (ESN), groups or individuals have no constitutional backing to threaten Nigeria’s integrity, adding 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.”

But in a statement, in Enugu, yesterday, Ohanaeze condemned alleged deliberate profiling threat against Igbo in Nigeria, stressing that Ndigbo are still mourning the brutal killing of innocent people during a peaceful demonstration in Aba, Abia state last Friday.

The statement, signed by the National Publicity Secretary of the group, Alex Ogbonnia, recalled that five members of IPOB were shot dead in Osusu, Aba, while on procession across Aba, lamenting that  the state’s Commissioner of Police, Mustapha Mohammed Bala, who confirmed the incident, accused the demonstrators of being “armed with petrol bombs, machetes, battle axes and other dangerous weapons.

“But Ohanaeze’s findings revealed that some residents, armed with video evidence, informed that the group was protesting peacefully against continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, before they were shot at.

“It is most appalling that Bala should refer to IPOB members as hoodlums, and it is most unacceptable to view the death of five IPOB members as ‘minimal casualties.’

“Every knowledgeable Nigerian knows that current political travails in Nigeria is 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 Igbo from the centres of power.”