On Friday the leadership of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, said the purpose of its struggle is to end endemic injustice perpetrated against the harmless and peace-loving people of Biafra by the Nigerian State in collaboration with the colonial powers.
The group said this in a statement by its media and publicity secretary, Emma Powerful in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State.
The statement said, “The struggle for Biafra liberation is a fight against endemic injustice perpetrated against the harmless and peace-loving people of Biafra by the Nigeria State in collaboration with colonial powers yet to forgive Biafra for championing the Nigerian independence in 1960. Because of the prominent roles of Biafrans who championed the Nigerian independence struggles.
“So, IPOB has been in the forefront of this struggle for the liberation of our people and we must achieve it by the grace of God Almighty Chukwu Okike Abiama who is in Heaven. Our aim is to end the marginalisation and humiliation of our people; to restore their human dignity and hope and to give them a country where they can live in peace and fulfil destiny.
“We thank you for recognizing that there was a massacre of the people of the East in 1966 which Nigeria has been covering up by removing history from the Nigeria academic curriculum of primary and secondary schools since 1973. This crafty manipulation is simply because they don’t want the world to know the evil they committed against the innocent citizens of Biafra.
“IPOB has exposed the atrocities of the Nigerian state against Biafra and brought it to the knowledge of the world. Today everybody is now talking about the atrocities committed against the people of Eastern Nigeria during the war from 1967 to 1970.
“Self-determination is not a crime but the right of the people to agitate for freedom. Our struggle for independence is not a declaration of war as mischievously misconstrued by the enemies. We only want to be free from oppression and subjugation; We want to be free from political exclusion and economic strangulation; We want to be free from mass slaughter by those who value cows above human lives.
“If the atrocities and unprovoked attacks against Biafra by Nigeria and in particular the Fulani jihadists were to be done to any country in Europe or Asia, do you think the world would have kept quiet? We don’t know why the world has continued to watch the ongoing genocide against the innocent people of Biafra by the Nigerian state and non-state actors.
“When we agitate peacefully, they slaughter us the more, and those who are lucky to be arrested alive are dumped in various secret cells in the North and abandoned. Yet the same double-faced Government is busy freeing arrested Fulani bandits and terrorists killing innocent Indigenous Nigerians in their numbers.
“IPOB remains a peaceful movement seeking freedom for the oppressed people of Biafra and those who don’t know what we are doing are busy blackmailing us. But the fact is that the movement for the emancipation of Biafra is beyond any single individual including our leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. It’s now a global movement that cannot be stopped by any man born of a woman. It’s a divine project that must be completed” the group noted.
