Biafra: South East, South South agitators threaten to boycott 2019 polls

• Okorocha flays IPOB, Arewa youths over remarks
• Public commentators caution on quit notice
• Police assure Ndigbo of security in Kano

The Lower Niger Congress (LNC), comprising agitators in the South East and South South, has threatened to boycott the 2019 general elections if Biafra Republic is not realised.

The Guardian reliably gathered that in the last couple of weeks, the Igbo in Asaba, Ibusa and other parts of the Delta State have been meeting with a view to perfecting the plot.A top member of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Tony Okonkwo, told our reporter in Asaba that: “We will not participate in the 2019 general elections unless we achieve our Biafra State. We will resist the polls. Nigeria, as a country, is sick. We are not going to take laws into our hands but we will call the bluff of the election.”

The Secretary-General of the LNC, Tony Nnadi, had also reiterated the same stance at the recent World Igbo Congress in Enugu where he maintained that Ndigbo’s participation in the upcoming polls would further enslave them.

“We are not talking about boycott. We are going to prevent the preparation towards any further election under the 1999 Constitution. We must now go for a referendum,” he stated.

Meanwhile, Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State has condemned the statements credited to IPOB, northern youths and the Arewa Consultative Assembly on a number of issues in the polity.

Okorocha, who was reacting to the sit-at-home order by the separatist group and the quit notice issued to Ndigbo in the north on his return from South Africa yesterday in Owerri, stated that the position of IPOB was not representative of the South East geopolitical region.

He described the remarks by the Arewa people on Ndigbo residing in the north as un-Nigerian.In the meantime, the National Association of Public Affairs Analysts (NAPAA) has called on all stakeholders in the Nigeria project to avoid a repeat of the two ugly incidents of the 1960s. They were the military coup and the ensuing civil war.

The association, in a statement by its president and secretary general, Seun Adelore and Comrade Jare Ajayi, warned that the coincidences of the events of the 1960s and that of the present decade should not be ignored.

NAPAA regretted that most of those who have been speaking on the quit notice given to Ndigbo in the north talk as though they are tired of the nation. Deploring the injustice, marginalisation, impunity, lack of fair-play among others that have characterised inter-ethnic relationship in the country, especially at the political level, the association expressed the belief that Nigerians will still be better off as citizens of one country.

The public commentators noted that the action of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) should be seen as a wake-up call to address various ills of Nigeria just as the perennial calls by the South West.

The starting point of this remedy, according to the analysts, is to have a constitution that is truly Nigerian.However, the Kano Police Command has assured South Easterners in the state of security of lives and properties.

Its spokesman, DSP Magaji Musa Majiya in a statement, urged the affected citizens to go about their activities without any fear of molestation or harassment. According to the release, the Commissioner of Police, Rabiu Yusuf, had held a meeting with the leadership of the Igbo community in the state where he gave the assurance.