Anthony Iwuoma
Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State has described the agitation for an independent Biafra as ‘madness’.
According to the governor, who is also the Chairman, South-East Governors Forum, what the people needed at this time is justice and equity and not a separate country, warning that new groups are likely to emerge to counter the secessionist groups if the intimidation and killings of people by the Indigenous People of Biafra, (IPOB) did not stop.
Speaking in an interview on Channels Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise, Governor Umahi said, “This idea of Biafra, Biafra is madness and we have said, ‘No’, we don’t want Biafra.
“If we go our separate ways, South East people will lose a lot because we’ve invested a lot in every part of this nation. It is not to our advantage to leave our investments and walk away.
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“Every elite in South East is not desirous of Biafra, we don’t want Biafra; we want to be treated equally like other regions in Nigeria,” he added.
Governor Umahi disagreed with the claim by Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, that there were more than 30 other separatist organisations in the South East, apart from the IPOB and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).
Governor Umahi said he knew about two separatist groups, IPOB and MASSOB, adding that unlike IPOB, which uses fear and killings in zone as a weapon, MASSOB had never been violent.
“The separatist groups we know of are IPOB and MASSOB. MASSOB has never been violent and they are approachable and they tend to reason with us but this other people, IPOB, their command is never in the country and every one of them stays out and dishes out messages of bitterness and messages of threats and fear and killings and are not here with us to feel the pains. “So, these are just the two groups that I can talk about, ” the governor said.
He also predicted the likely emergence of counter-separatist movements if IPOB does not retrace from its violent and deadly campaign.
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Governor Umahi continued, “I fear that if IPOB does not call their people to order and stop these threats and killings and all that, other groups will rise up to counter it but there is no way South East would be grounded, there is no way South-east will be sitting at home while other parts of the country will be doing businesses whereas we are the people that should be moving because we earn our living by moving.”
The governor rejected speculations that perpetrators of the killings and spiraling violence in the South-east come from outside the zone.
He said, “We are chief security officers in our various states and we understand what is happening; we know that it is our people that are killing our people and they started killing security men, they started burning houses, they started stopping people from moving freely and we started shouting.”
As far as the governor is concerned, the IPOB sit-at-home order in the South-east would fail if enough security presence is deployed in the region.
“People are not sitting at home out of obedience or compliance; people are sitting at home out of fear for their lives.
“If you have a policeman to everybody, nobody is going to obey any sit-at-home, nobody is going to obey that. We are going to do what we have been doing to safeguard the lives of our people because we’ve got the confidence of our people and that you cannot have Biafra by the way they are going about it,” Governor Umahi said.