On The IPOB Saga: Those Are Human Beings Not Animals

Pro-Biafra protesters celebrating Biafra anniversary.

– The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) worldwide has cried out over the massacre of pro-Biafrans in Nigeria

– IPOB claims that 53 people were killed during the Biafra anniversary which held on Monday, May 30.

– The group further claims that over 200 people were injured and more than 400 were arrested

IPOB also alleged that Hausa/Fulani terrorists group who were not on uniforms attacked its members with the army, Navy and police who killed and the carried dead bodies with their hilux vans.
A victim of the clash in Anambra, the IPOB says about 53 pro-Biafra activists were killed.

“Hypocrisy is when you declare war on unarmed agitators but keep silent on the Fulani herdsmen mission to conquer Benue, Enugu and Ekiti”~ Bamidele Williams

I’ve received several calls from conscious Nigerians and media houses asking for my opinion on the recent IPOB wildfire saga.
This among others made me to put my ever bleeding pen to paper.

According to a report by Sahara Reporter’s of a statement released by the Military and signed by Colonel HA Gambo, Deputy Director of Arny Public Relations, 82 Division of the Nigerian Army Enugu;
The Military attested to the fact that they opened fire on Independent People’s of Biafra(IPOB) protesters on the account of self defense and that they want to mar President Buhari’s one year in office which leaves an indelible blood paints of lost lives and several injured.

So proud to announce the killing of civilians. It can only happen in Nigeria.

The people were only celebrating their fore-announced 50th anniversary in remembrance of their people that lost their lives during the civil war.
Imagine the deployment of Army, Nigerian Navy, Nigeria police, Department of State Service and National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, when it is not a declaration of war! On unarmed men.

Please the military should answer this, were your officers just guiding them without any form of harm to them that the IPOB, MASSOB, decided to attack your men?
We still reason, though some allow their rationality to be clouded by ethnicity and and religion. This is an abuse on human rights’.

We did not hear of such deployment or the intervention of the militaries when the armed Fulani’s herdsmen were busy perpetrating their atrocities in Enugu, Benue and Ekiti.

There is no justification for attacking or shooting at unarmed protesters or people who are honouring their fallen comrades. If at all there are any reasons to disrupt the protesters, it should be by rubber bullets, repelling water as seen in the western countries and not by bullets.
The Nigeria-Biafra war was an event that happened, the history, memories and the ways that war impacted the Igbo’s and the memories can’t be erased. Many wars has been fought all over the world and people who were heavily affected by those wars have days when they remember their fallen brothers, it’s not a big deal but the Nigerian government is making it to look like one. Jews all over the world still celebrate Yom Ha’Shoah to remember and honour the victims of Holocaust.

The military claim they acted on self defense. Self defense when you attack people praying in Catholic church in Onitsha? Self defense when you attack people praying in another church in Nsukka? Self defense when you attack IPOB members praying in Nkaliki high school Abakaliki?
For you all celebrating this, note that the government is inviting chaos that might eat up Nigeria.
Boko Haram and Niger Delta’s are still there

“I remember I wrote an article during the (civil) war and I said at that time that Biafra cannot be defeated,” he told the private Channels television station.
“People misunderstood what I was saying. I said once an idea has taken hold, you cannot destroy that idea…
You may destroy the people that carry the idea on the battlefield, but, ultimately, it is not the end of the story.”~ Prof. Wole Soyinka

Recent past weeks have seen a wave of protests calling for the release of the London-based director of Radio Biafra Nnamdi Kanu, who is also head of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) pressure group.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges of criminal conspiracy and intimidation, and belonging to a banned organisation. He remains in the custody of Nigeria’s secret police.

The protests also saw calls for a separate state of Biafra, 45 years on from the end of a brutal civil war sparked by the declaration of an independent republic in 1967.

Some one million died of the effects of war, starvation, loneliness and illness.

Soyinka himself was arrested and detained for almost two years by Nigeria’s then-military regime over his alleged interaction with the Biafra leadership under General Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu.

The novelist and playwright, Prof. Wole Soyinka once said in one of his recent statements on the saga published by Vanguard;
“Nigeria’s civilian government now needed to talk to pro-Biafra activists, most of them ethnic Igbos who complain of being marginalised since the end of the conflict.

Ask what are those things we can do to make you content, to make you feel part of this entity (Nigeria)… what can we do to make them feel that they belong and are not alienated?” he said.

“Listen to some other Biafrans and ask them why they want to stay.
“But, don’t go around saying ‘the sovereignty of this country is indivisible, this won’t happen under my watch, it is not negotiable’. That type of language would only make matters worse.”

Police have sent reinforcements to the southeast because of the protests and vowed anyone threatening Nigeria’s sovereignty would “face the full wrath of the law”.

President Buhari should better realise that this is not a military regime.
Call them and their leaders as Prof. said and have an intensive dialogue.
Don’t spend the remaining years fighting upsurges’

Peace, Unity , Justice and Security is all we say.

President Buhari should tread gently and dealt amicably with the IPOB’s;
They are not animals.
There are senses in their actions and reactions.

GOD BLESS NIGERIA

Written by BAMIDELE WILLIAMS.
A campus journalist and a student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria. I can be reached on 08134810254

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.