5 Things Igbo Leader Said About Biafra

An Igbo leader, Elliot Uko has spoken about the on-going agitation for a Biafra state by Igbos in the South Eastern Nigeria.
Elliot Uko

Earlier today N, hundreds of Biafran agitators have stormed the streets to demand the release of Nnamdi Kanu, the director of Radio Biafra even after the police had issued a warning to the Biafrans over their planned protest.

Uko, an evangelist who is also the founder of the Igbo Youth Movement (IYM) and Deputy Secretary of the Igbo Leaders of Thought (ILT) said the President to urgently restructure the country into true fiscal federalism.

Naij.com has picked five major points raised at the interview and bring them to your reading. Read below

1. The agitation for Biafra is a potential threat, a big time-bomb, not just for the territorial integrity of Nigeria but also for peace in the entire West Africa. Any crisis in Nigeria will reverberate all over the West African sub-region.

2. The Biafran issue is not about Ralph Uwazurike, Nnamdi Kanu or any individual. In fact, those characters are merely taking advantage of a fact that is on ground, that Nigeria has been unfair to Ndigbo, to the extent that the new generation finds it unacceptable. So, the demand for Biafra is real. They are not miscreants. They are contributing their own money, fighting for what they believe in.

3. The people who are agitating for Biafra are in their millions. To kill them, you need to hire professional soldiers from across the world to help in killing them. And when you kill them, you have a problem of where to pack their corpses. If you want to imprison them, Buhari will have to build at least 500 to 600 new large prisons, each with a capacity of holding 7,000 to 10,000 inmates. Where will the funds to build enough prisons to contain the 7 to 8 million angry youths who are agitating for Biafra come from?

4. The younger generation of Ndigbo are bitter about the structure of Nigeria. They believe that the structure is skewed against them, in politics, in education, in the provision of social infrastructure, and the agitation for Biafra is real.

5. Biafra is sacred to Ndigbo. Biafra is about blood, the blood of three million Ndigbo, some killed in cold blood in pogroms in the North; some died out of hunger and starvation; millions of children died of kwashiorkor; people who died in the battle field armed with only two bullets against a much larger and better armed army. It elicits emotion, and it's the major thing that you can use to manipulate Igbo people to cause trouble anywhere. It's real.

Read the full interview on Vanguard.

Meanwhile, the Bayelsa state police command has said it has arrested 83 Biafria protesters in the state. Those arrested are 78 males and 5 females.