IPOB PRESS RELEASE,
21/09/2023.

We the global family and movement of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) ably led by the great and indefatigable brave leader Mazi Nnamdi KANU condemn the bloody attack that led to the death of 8 Police and military officers at Ehime Mbano LGA of Imo State.

Such reckless attacks and shedding of blood are not needed to achieve Biafra freedom in our territory. The Biafra agitation championed by IPOB since 2012 has been totally peaceful until the Nigeria government started sponsoring splinter groups in order to blackmail IPOB and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Today, the monsters they have spoon-fed are consuming them. We in IPOB for years have been shouting about the evil plan of the Nigeria government towards IPOB’s peaceful agitation which is simply demanding for a referendum date for the Biafran people to determine their own fate as Indigenous people.

The Nigeria government overtly and covertly sponsors criminal activities in Biafran territory so that they can tarnish the hard earned global image of a non-violent IPOB movement and additionally hope to blackmail ESN which was a product of necessity set up to fill the gap which the Nigerian Security apparatus deliberately and unconscionably created by allowing Fulani terrorists invade our farmlands and forests killing farmers and raping our women with the sole objective to over run Biafraland and take over our ancestral heritage.

The Nigeria government knows those behind this latest attack on security personnel. They shouldn’t faine ignorance or claim to be surprised because they are working with the perpetrators of that unnecessary attack in order to blackmail IPOB and Mazi Nnamdi KANU. This has been their modus operandi for the past couple of years, and particularly now that the case they instituted against Mazi Nnamdi Kanu at the Supreme Court is approaching for consideration. It is important that we bear in mind that this case before the Supreme Court was as a result of Nigerian government’s request for stay of execution order of the Appeal Court’s decision of October 13, 2022 which discharged and acquitted Mazi Nnamdi KANU of all charges brought by the govt beforethe appellate court against Mazi NnamdiKanu. The Nigeria DSS and all their security machinery are putting their heads together to device a strategy to blackmail IPOB and implicatr Mazi Nnamdi Kanu for the violence and terrorism they have levied on the innocent Biafran civilian populace. They should not deceive the public by blaming anybody when they are much aware of the assailants. Sacrificing some Nigeria police and military officers’ lives to achieve a blackmail against IPOB has been their old strategy and dirty game.

If, indeed, the Nigeria government is interested in fishing out the murderers of the Police officers at Ehime Mbano, they know exactly what to do and where to focus their attention. We, therefore, ask the Nigeria police to go after the criminals who murdered their colleagues and not after innocent villagers. Often than not, cowards in the Nigeria security agencies carry out revenge on ordinary citizens anytime armed criminals attack them. No villagers will attack policemen within their village. Therefore, no Ehime Mbano community should be invaded as a result of the attack and murder of the security officers.
Nigeria security forces must know that the villagers are innocent and are not safe in the hands of these criminals who are claiming to be fighting for Biafra freedom but who, in actual fact, are proxies of the Nigerian government set up to destabilise Biafraland.

IPOB doesn’t encourage people to murder or waste innocent people’s lives because lives are sacred and must be preserved and protected. We encourage Nigeria security to use their intelligence prowess to fish out the perpetractors.

Nevertheless, we in IPOB condemn the siege and attack on the Southeast by the police and military and other Nigeria security forces. Nigeria must dismountle illegal roadblocks that they have set up across the Southeast Region to be exorting from motorists. They have mounted road blocks and illegal checkpoints but are still not able to stop criminals. If they don’t know how to stop and apprehend criminals, let them beg IPOB intelligence unit to teach them how to handle such without tarnishing their integrity and image by torturing citizens in the region and collecting money from them. Police and military have mounted illegal roadblocks in every nook and cranny of the Southeast, even inside our interior communites.

This is not happening to any other region in Nigeria. The ruthless security men at these illegal roadblocks always molest, abduct, rape, and extort money from struggling villagers and road users. They are choking our people and radicalizing the innocent youths who are the main victims of this police and military brutality. As we condemn the bloody attack on the police and the military, we also condemn the indiscriminate military and police roadblocks in the Southeast. The Nigeria Security Forces should let Ndigbo breathe.

COMRADE EMMA POWERFUL, MEDIA, AND PUBLICITY SECRETARY FOR IPOB.