THE Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has asked those
clamouring for restructuring of Nigeria to read Section 9 of the 1999
constitution and find out that such venture is virtually impossible.
In
a statement signed by Comrade Emma Powerful, Media and Publicity
Secretary of IPOB, in response to the meeting of South Eastern leaders
in Enugu, weekend, the group said Section 9 of the 1999 constitution
midwifed by General Abdulsalami Abubakar was intended to make slaves of
every part of Nigeria except the North.
Part of the statement
reads, “Most surprising of all in the communiqué (issued by South
Eastern leaders after their meeting) was their display of ignorance of
the fact that their plea for restructuring is dead on arrival because of
the stringent and pro-North conditions stipulated in Section 9 of the
constitution upon which any successful restructuring must be anchored.
“We
strongly advise those who are clamouring for restructuring to go and
read Section 9 of the constitution and carry out simple computation of
two-thirds of the number of state Houses of Assembly, members of Senate,
and members of House of Representatives.”
The group said it has
resolved to approach the United Nations to mandate and supervise a
referendum that would usher in the sovereign nation of Biafra and that
it was convinced that “the restoration of the nation of Biafra is a
divine project whose time has come and therefore, unstoppable,
unquenchable, irreversible and irrevocable.”
As for the position
of Ohanaeze Ndigbo and South East governors, IPOB argued that that body
could not represent Biafra because Biafra’s geographical jurisdiction
exceeded the territory under which both bodies held sway.
The
IPOB said, “It is on record that Ohanaeze is purely an ethnic-based
voluntary socio-cultural organisation restricted to only the
Igbo-speaking people of the old Eastern region of Nigeria.
“Similarly,
the lame duck governors of the unconstitutional South East oversee only
some Igbo-speaking areas of the old Eastern region.
“On the
contrary, the nation of Biafra covers 10 states that were carved out of
the old Eastern and Midwestern regions with the addition of Biafra
communities in Edo, Benue, and Kogi states.”
For these reasons,
IPOB urged Biafrans to ignore the communiqué issued by the leaders on
the basis that they are not qualified to speak for Biafra, saying that
at the end, it is the people that will decide what they want.
Still
carpeting Ohanaeze and the governors of the South East states, IPOB
said, “In the said communiqué, Ohanaeze and the lame duck governors
affirmed their support for a united Nigeria, a British-created
contraption.
“They craved for an egalitarian and a Utopian
society within the context of social and ethno-religious equity in
Nigeria but they forgot that Nigeria is a ranking member of the
Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), which contradicts section 10 of
the Abdulsalami Abubakar-written fraudulent constitution of Nigeria.”
They described the communiqué issued at the end of the Ohanaeze meeting as “shameful, disgraceful and cowardly. “
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