BIAFRA: IPOB Rejects Igbo Presidency, Refuse to Back Obi

BIAFRA: IPOB Rejects Igbo Presidency, Refuses to Back Obi.

The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has rejected the Labour Party, LP, presidential candidate, Peter Obi, and the Igbo presidency as a more legitimate path to nationhood.

The organization, headed by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu who has been in DSS custody since the time he was renditioned from his base in Kenya, said it has neither interest in a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction nor a Nigerian President of South-East extraction.

IPOB has rejected Igbo presidency and refused to back Peter Obi, maintaining that its members are not part of Obi’s supporters because they are interested in Nigeria’s disintegration, referring to the presidential candidate of the Labour Party who is a former governor of Anambra State, an Igbo man.

This was revealed in a statement released by Emma Powerful, spokesman of the separatist group, who has said Nigeria is irredeemable while continuing to call for the release of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

“The Igbo people rallying behind Peter Obi are not IPOB members because IPOB’s goal is the disintegration of the Nigerian enterprise irrespective of whether Peter Obi or anyone else from the Biafran geographic space is contesting in the Nigerian farce of an election,” Powerful said.

“IPOB is a freedom fighting movement and has nothing whatsoever to do with or in Nigerian politics. So long as we in IPOB are concerned, Nigeria is irredeemable.”

IPOB also reiterated its call for the release of its leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, including calls for a referendum in the Southeast.

Nnamdi Kanu is the current leader of the IPOB. He is a Nigerian- British citizen. The IPOB leader, who was granted bail in April 2017, fled the country after an invasion of his home in Afara-Ukwu, near Umuahia, Abia State, by the Nigerian military in September of that year.

He is currently in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS), and undergoing trial for alleged charges of terrorism against the federal republic of Nigeria, amongst others.

Biafra nationalism has continued to dominate the minds of millions of Nigerian youths east of the Naija, especially people of the old Eastern block which comprises mainly the Igbo ethnic group.

Calls for secession increased under the Buhari administration, taking on the garb of an ethnic uprising when men of the Nigerian security forces in a bid to crush dissent, orchestrated myriads of extra-judicious killings of youths in the region, inciting some into resistance against the authorities.

IPOB is a nationalist separatist group with tentacles across the world with the sole objective to restore the Republic of Biafra, which fought for secession from Nigeria in the Nigerian Civil War that lasted between 1967-1970.