Separatist group, Indigenous People of
Biafra, IPOB has faulted President Muhammadu Buhari’s speech to Igbo
corpers who visited him in his home town earlier in the week, where he
called on them to ask their brothers to perish the thought of attaining
an independent state, Biafra.
The group in a press release sent to
journalists in Awka and signed by the spokespersons of the group Mr.
Emma Nmezu and Dr. Clifford Chukwuemeka Iroanya said President Buhari
could not be ‘running to the north’ each time he wanted to speak to
Igbos, and questioned why he was not coming to Biafraland to preach
unity to them.
IPOB also faulted Buhari’s claim that
the reason for the 30 months war between Nigeria and Biafran forces was
not oil or money, but the quest to remain a united country.
In the release titled: The Muhammadu
Buhari speech to youth corpers: setting the records straight stated
that, “The first question is: why can’t Buhari come to Biafraland to
lecture Biafrans on unity rather than mouthing it every time he visits
Daura or someplace in Northern Nigeria? Is Northern Nigeria the only
place that a President travels to?
“Can anyone point us to a single visit
that Buhari has made to Biafraland from May 29, 2015 till date? Buhari
has made 30 foreign trips as at the end of May 2016 as well as countless
trips to the Northern part of Nigeria including Boko Haram controlled
regions but he has not set his feet on Biafran soil since he was sworn
in on the 29th of May 2015”.
IPOB insisted that the reason for the
war was not unity as stated by the president, saying, “Because Buhari
was a junior officer in the Nigerian Army, it is understandable that he
was not privy to the motive behind the war of genocide on Biafra which
had the backing of our colonial masters.
“It may interest Buhari to know that in
August 1967, the British Commonwealth Minister George Thomas informed
the British Parliament that: ‘The sole immediate British interest in
Nigeria is that the Nigerian economy should be brought back to a
condition in which our substantial trade and investment in the country
can be further developed, and particularly so we can regain access to
important oil installations’. Buhari should now understand that oil is
the main reason why they got the support of Britain.”
The group added that it was because of
the control of oil in Biafraland that Britain in 1968 alone supplied
hundreds of armoured personnel carriers (APCs), 10,000 machine guns, 20
million rounds of ammunition, 3,000 bayonets, 10,000 rifles with grenade
launchers, 15,000 pounds of explosives, 21,000 mortar bombs, 42,500
Howitzer rounds, 5,000 submachine guns and other weapons of mass
destruction deployed which aided the Nigeria side during the war.
It said that the excuse that Nigeria was
big enough and therefore Biafrans were bound by the sheer size of
Nigeria to be part of it, was not logical. They reminded the president
that Soviet Union was big and a super power but they broke up.
Yugoslavia went their separate ways with the active support of Britain.
“Those familiar with the history of
British politics will know that it was Paddy Ashdown, MP the leader of
the Liberal Democrat Party that sought and gained the backing of the
British Government of the day to support the independence of the Muslim
enclave of Bosnia Herzegovina away from Yugoslavia.
“There are nations that are
significantly smaller than Biafra both in size and in population. For
Buhari’s information, Biafra has a population of over 70 million. The
total area of Biafra is over 29,400 square miles. Thus Biafra is almost
as big as Gambia and Sierra Leone put together, and is bigger than Togo
or Rwanda and Burundi combined, and is four times the size of the
Republic of Israel.” It wrote.
Finally, the group urged President
Buhari to shelve the idea of always retelling stories of Biafra genocide
as it would not shake the resolve and determination of Biafrans on the
restoration of their God-given nation of Biafra.
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