Written by George Orwell in 1949, 1984 detailed the imperative of resisting oppression and tyranny, offering great insight into a twisted and very cruel future if nations are allowed to fall to the rule of totalitarianism.
The book helped put in proper perspective, how totalitarian regimes attempt to control our thoughts and lives through surveillance and by seizing control of the mass media, most times, violently. In this brilliantly articulated piece of work, we see a “party” that deploys enormous resources into eliminating dissent to the extent of establishing edicts that criminalize holding anti-government thoughts and opinions. Do these methods sound familiar to you? If so, then I welcome you dear reader to 1984
In an event described as the “Nigerian Drama” by The New York Times in 1984, the regime of Buhari, violating human rights and international laws, staged a kidnap of a former Minister of Transport, Umaru Dikko, after he was ambushed at his London base. This is the same junta that had just overthrown an elected government of Shagari under whom Dikko served as Minister.
Biafra agitator, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Credit: MNK
Fast forward to 2021, close to four decades after, the same serial law offender staged a similar attack on Human Rights and International laws in the abduction of the IPOB leader and British Citizen, Nnamdi Kanu, in Kenya. This is after he returned in 2015 in a disguised democratic toga.
Shortly after the abduction of Kanu, barely 24 hours to a July 3rd protest declared by Yoruba secessionist group, the regime sent in masked DSS operatives after the Yoruba secessionist agitator and leader, Sunday Igboho, stormed his Ibadan residence at the dead of the night like armed assassins, arrested thirteen persons and in a public statement released by its PRO, Peter Afunnaya, boasted to have extra-judicially murdered two of Igboho’s allies.
On the day of the protest, however, the regime deployed combined forces of the police and military. The security forces shot violently and sporadically against the peaceful agitators and protesters, killing Jumoke, a 14-year-old female trader.
It should be recalled that as far back as 2015, there have been renewed calls for the secession of the Igbo people from Nigeria by the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB. The secession campaigns attained a threshold of popularity upon the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu on the 20th of October, 2015. And as the agitation grew bigger and larger, no thanks to increasing insecurity and socio-economic injustice in the country that has pauperized millions of Nigerians and made the country totally unsafe for habitation. This is also complicated by the manner in which the government protects and funds terrorists and bandits while deploying enormous resources into hunting, arresting, and killing protesters and all who maintain dissent against the regime.
But the secessionists were not the only group or persons to fall victim to the tyranny and brazen human rights violations of the Buhari regime. Recall that on August 3rd, 2019, at about 1 AM, Omoyele Sowore, leading investigative journalist and revolutionary activist was abducted in the middle of the night by masked men of the DSS who stormed his Lagos temporary residence like assassins.
For calling a RevolutionNow Protest against misgovernance and crass incompetence of the regime, Sowore spent five months in unjust detention after the regime violated two court orders for his release. Worst still, the regime in desperation to rearrest Sowore after it reluctantly obeyed the order to release the latter on bail, the DSS stormed the courtroom, violating the sanctity of the court right in front of the presiding judge who had to escape the violent scene instigated by the gun-wielding DSS operatives. The regime created an unfathomable precedent of judicial impunity when it turned Justice Ijeoma’s court into a war zone.
There is also El-Zakzaky whom the regime continues to hold hostage despite court orders that have mandated it to release him on bail. Aside from murdering his children extrajudicially, the regime has murdered scores of his followers for asking the government to comply with court orders granting bail to the Sheik.
The regime for the past six years of administration had equally devoted time to arresting, intimidating, and harassing journalists. According to media reports, no less than eight journalists have been killed on duty under the regime with over 500 falling victims to harassment, intimidation, torture, and unjust detentions. Today, it has become a norm to see journalists who have come to cover protests dressed in bulletproofs as though covering a war zone. No doubt, the regime had turned protest grounds into a theatre of war.
When the regime appeared not to be satisfied with simply attacking and gagging the press, it went straight for the social media, prescribing death by hanging for “hate speech’’; a deliberate attempt to gag Nigerians and violate their constitutional right to free speech. The regime did not want a free press, it frowned against citizen’s right to free speech and protests. It does not want Nigerians to protest offline and also against them expressing their frustrations on social media, especially Twitter. It was this gross hostility to free speech that forced the regime into banning over 200 million Nigerians from using Twitter.
No regime in history, military and civilian, has treated the judiciary and the rule of law with such disdain and brazen impunity. No regime in the history of the country has been so hostile to its citizens without any modicum of regard for their lives or constitutional rights. No regime in history had ever treated the press and the Nigerian people with so much hate and utter contempt.
The only regime that ever measured close to Buhari’s despotism is the military junta of 1984; the only Junta to have ever dethroned an elected government. Buhari’s capacity for lawlessness and impunity is second to none, such that only Buhari could have surpassed the record of his own lawlessness over three decades after.
Buhari may not only be classified as a despot with the unique ability to harness the powers of Nigeria’s systemic impunity to muster a social, political, and economic siege against the Nigerian people, he is the only Nigerian leader fit to be described as a serial law offender, ever to occupy Nigeria’s political space.
Over the past few weeks, there has been an intensified publicity of the campaign for the breakaway of the Yoruba people from Nigeria. The proponents of this agitation want an independent republic of the Yoruba nation or as they put it — Oduduwa Republic. And over a week ago, the agitation has taken a step further with a recent press conference led by Sunday Igboho and Professor Banji Akintoye. At the press conference, the duo had pronounced into existence the Yoruba nation and forthwith, advised all persons of Yoruba descent living in the Northern region of Nigeria to return to the South-West, even as the duo warned of a looming ethnic war. In a show of seriousness for their agitation, a proposed currency for the Oduduwa Republic was afterward circulated on social media and publicized by the mainstream media. The currency was named “Fadaka” — a Yoruba word for Silver.
It should be noted that the demand for an independent nation of the Yoruba people did not just start this year. Such demands and agitations had been like a song on the lips of quite a number of persons over the past years.
An earlier call for Oduduwa Republic precipitated the announcement of a march which was scheduled for October 1, 2020. While the Nigerian government’s supposed ban on protests forced the Oduduwa Republic agitators into a cowardly capitulation, it was however impossible for the government to put a halt to the agitation due to the increasing socio-economic injustice within the country.
Needless to say, the renewed and intensified calls for a republic of the Yoruba people began with the rising cases of kidnappings and banditry in South-West Nigeria. While Northern Nigeria had suffered the worst cases of insecurity, terrorism, kidnappings, and banditry, most parts of the South-West, especially Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, and Ekiti states were also beginning to deal with similar threats but of lesser magnitude when compared to the horrors in the northern region, where women, men, girls, and boys have become easy prey in the fiery dens of bandits and terrorists. The fact that schools in Kaduna had to be closed by the state government is a testament to how much the insecurity in the North has taken a ridiculous turn of very embarrassing magnitude.
Of much deeper embarrassment is how powerless and utterly incapacitated the Nigerian government appears in the face of such insecurity that has consumed thousands of lives, rendered thousands homeless, made many fatherless, scores motherless, and more innocent children orphans. It is conditions such as this that gave rise to Sunday Igboho and his team who volunteered themselves to rid Yorubaland of insecurity by raising arms against the forces of banditry. While their aim expressed an intention to fight kidnappings and banditry, their methods of engagement and slogans are that of unfair ethnoreligious stereotyping against the Fulani people who are known for herding cattle.
Although the majority of the cattle herders are Fulani, it is evident that not all Fulani cattle herders are criminals, and definitely, not all Fulanis are bandits. Worthy of note is the fact that despite producing more Nigerian Presidents and Heads of State, Northern Nigeria ranks worse in the regional economic indices of the country. The Fulani people however are at the top of that ladder, with millions of poor people who could barely afford chickens, let alone cattle. While there may be a handful of Fulanis who own cattle in the South-West, most of the cattle being herded by poor Fulani herders are owned by some Southern elites who are into animal husbandry. In the event that some Fulani herders protect cattle with Ak-47 rifles, one can almost be certain that those weapons were provided by the Southern and Northern elites who own those cattle herded and protected by the poor Fulanis in the South-West. This makes it clear that the “ethnicization” of insecurity within the South-Western region of Nigeria is as unnecessary as ethnicizing terrorism in the Northern region of Nigeria. Ritual killings in Ijebu-Ode, child/street cultism in Lagos and street/campus cultism, and the age-long kidnapping in the South-South region of the country are pointers to the fact that insecurity is not synonymous with a particular ethnic group.
Furthermore, the regime of General Muhammadu Buhari in talks, actions, and inactions has not only proven to be completely incompetent, clueless, and largely anti-people, its demeanor, nepotism, and ethnoreligious favoritism have also helped water the seeds of ethnic strife within the country. It is in the light of these that what begun as a Sunday Igboho-led resistance against killer herdsmen had suddenly metamorphosed into a Yoruba self-determination agitation.
However, what most ethnic agitators fail to understand is that despite Buhari’s nepotism and ethnocentric politics or “Fulanization agenda” as some secessionists would call it, the millions of the average Fulani people have not benefited from this so-called “Fulanization agenda”, they have in fact become worse of, much further than they ever were even under regimes headed by Nigerians from the Southern region like Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. On the contrary, the “Fulanization agenda” has only benefited and further empowered Buhari’s rich and powerful friends. In like manner, a “Southernization agenda” would most likely not be of any benefit to the average Southerner but for the rich and powerful Southern elites. Just the same way Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan’s led governments have only benefited their Southern friends and Northern cronies. The same way our respective state governors and legislators from the Southern region have only represented the interests of their rich friends and not the average Southerner.
Before the recent calls for an independent State of the Yoruba people, there had been more serious calls for secession by other regions in Nigeria. And in each case, the Nigerian state has met such agitations with untoward violence and repression. The first of which happened during the administration of Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo Man from South-East Nigeria and the Nigerian Head of State as he then was. During the regime of Ironsi, Isaac Boro led several agitations and campaigns for the secession of the people of the Niger Delta majorly domiciled in what is now known as South-South region of Nigeria. The Aguiyi-Ironsi regime crushed the movement with maximum force and subsequently executed Isaac Boro.
The story of Biafra is a more popular one. The Biafran struggle for secession from Nigeria precipitated into over three years of war which led to the death of millions of Nigerians. The Nigerian state did not only crush the Biafra agitation with maximum force, but it also committed one of the worst genocide in the history of mankind. Interestingly, the shadows of the 20th century Biafra war are now upon us in the 21st century with a renewed call for Biafra Republic led by Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB. This is because the socio-economic conditions that led to the struggle for Biafra in 1967 are still prevalent in 2021, but in the worst dimension and in a way that has now attracted an additional campaign for the exit of the Yoruba people.
While the right to self-determination remains a right guaranteed by Local and International Laws of Man and Nature, do we actually need to go the ethnic route in pursuit of freedom and socio-economic justice? Does our problem as a people have anything to do with the ethnicity of persons in power? Already, South-West governors and a number of Monarchs who have done nothing other than stealing from the poor people of Western Nigeria have stated their opposition to the Igboho-led agitation for Oduduwa Republic. It was South-East governors that unanimously announced the proscription of IPOB and have on several occasions supported the killing of IPOB members and innocent Igbo bystanders by the Nigerian Army. Sanwo-Olu, a Yoruba man, was the one who invited the Nigerian Army to shoot at peaceful protesters at Lekki Tollgate during the #EndSARS protest in October 2020.
As President, Obasanjo, a Yoruba man from Ota, Ogun state, could not even erect a decent road in his hometown, Ota, let alone deliver quality governance to the people of Nigeria. Aside from the Legendary corruption, maladministration, and gross ineptitude of President Jonathan, his Hometown, Otuoke, in Bayelsa State, boasts only flooded roads and streets. And as I have previously enumerated, more Presidents and Heads of State had come from Northern Nigeria, but the North is the worst in all socio-economic indices with the highest rate of insecurity, illiteracy, poverty, mortality, poor hygiene, lack of accessibility to clean water and least infrastructure. To be clear, while southern elites have had their fair share in exploiting the poor people of the South and the Nigerian people at large, the North, however, parades the worst of the Nigerian elites. These people enslave their Northern poor counterparts and also prevent them from resistance by denying them education and imposing slavish religious indoctrinations. If the thoughts of objectivity are given a chance, then it’ll be clearer that the poor people across all ethnic groups are exploited by the rich and powerful elites organized across all ethnoreligious clusters across the country.
It is audible to the deaf and visible to the blind that the enemies of the Southern people are first the rich and powerful elites in the South, and then their rich and powerful Northern colleagues. All the governors, House of Representatives members, Senators, and Local government officials of the South are Southerners. They are directly responsible for the oppression and impoverishment of the Southern people before their Northern counterparts. Hence, does it not make sense for the poor people across all ethnoreligious groupings to bond themselves in a revolution against their common oppressors who are also organized and united irrespective of their ethnoreligious differences than to ensnare themselves in a civil war occasioned by ethnic agitations?
Meanwhile, history has proven that a civil war is always inevitable with secessionist agitations. A civil war is a war, funded by rich people but consumes the lives of poor people and destroys their properties and heritage. Here, poor persons of different ethnic backgrounds are the ones led to the slaughter, either as soldiers or innocent and hungry bystanders. Poor people die and fight themselves in a civil war that ends up benefiting in varying proportions, the elites of the different ethnic groups. Although the Nigerian State will respond to a call for revolution with very deadly hostility and violence, the oppressed people can be sure they are “dying” in a fight against their common oppressors, rather than killing themselves in an ethnic war imposed and funded by the rich elites of different ethnic groups.
Although due to better access to education when compared to the imposed illiteracy in the north, and Western civilization, the people of Southern Nigeria appear to be more politically conscious. Shall we then say the apparently more politically conscious South must wait endlessly on the growing consciousness of the oppressed people of the North? Definitely not! For me, I’d rather the oppressed people of the South fight the incompetent and anti-people federal government alongside their corrupt leaders and governors of Southern origin. And while doing this, also encourage and support the struggles of the poor people of the North against their more vicious ruling elites. Even if the Yoruba and Igbo must necessarily secede from Nigeria, it is most important to in the first instance, join hands to defeat the common exploiters of poor people, organized over and across all ethnic groups and regions.
In all, the division of oppressed people along ethnic lines does little or nothing to liberate the poor from the shackles of poverty, hardship, and oppression. On the contrary, it’ll end up strengthening the hold of the rich and powerful few over millions of poor and oppressed Nigerians.
Nnamdi Okorie said in late October, after the widespread protests against police brutality in Nigeria resulted in days of tumult in Oyigbo, a crowded suburb of the oil hub southern city of Port Harcourt, soldiers moved from house to house and searched for members of the separatist pro-Biafra group, IPOB.
Local authorities had blamed members of the state-banned Indigenous People of Biafra for the rampage that saw police stations and army patrol vehicles torched and six soldiers and four police officers killed in the town.
When soldiers arrived the Okories home, they wanted to take his 22-year-old son away, he said. But the young man, Obinna, refused to board the army’s Hilux pickup and tried to escape. He was shot dead and his body taken away by the soldiers, sending residents who witnessed the killing fleeing for safety.
“They should please give me my son’s body either dead or alive; I am committing all things to God who is the ultimate judge,” Okorie told Ubuntu Times, weeping.
For the days that followed, the River State government imposed a round-the-clock curfew and troops barricaded the area, leaving residents without access to water and food as security forces combed the area and randomly attacked locals, residents said.
“It was very tense. People could not come in or go out of the place for days. It was more like a war zone,” said Ike Azubuike, an oil worker who lives in the town.
Enforcing the curfew brought more casualties. Remigus Nkwocha said her husband who had gone on October 25 to a nearby market to purchase food items they could use through the curfew period, was hit by a stray bullet fired by soldiers implementing the lockdown. He died afterwards in the hospital.
Weeping in the midst of her children and sympathizers, Mrs. Nkwocha told Ubuntu Times her biggest worry was how to raise their four children. “I’m finished. I can’t bear it alone,” she said.
With access restored to the area after weeks of a punishing curfew which the government said was aimed at checking the activities of IPOB, a group that seeks an independent state of Biafra, the extent of the bloody raid has become clearer and residents have narrated their ordeal at the hands of security agents.
All the residents selected at random and interviewed separately said soldiers searched for members of IPOB and shot indiscriminately and killed people in an apparent reprisal for the killing of soldiers. At least 20 people would have died in the raid, they said.
The army said its troops “acted professionally” and denied attacking residents. The spokesperson for 6 Division of the Nigerian Army in Port Harcourt, Major Charles Ekeocha, said the army only entered houses that were possible hideouts for hoodlums, according to the Guardian newspaper.
Facing criticisms, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state denied ordering soldiers to kill residents in the community, but insisted he will “not fold my arms and watch criminals destroy my state.”
Protests and Rampage
The Oyigbo incident has become the latest bloody incident involving troops in the aftermath of the campaign against police brutality in Nigeria. The #EndSARS protests lasted weeks seeking the dissolution of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad. The protests found appeal with the country’s large population of unemployed youths and university students forced to stay at home due to lecturers’ strike.
Burnt trucks residents say were military pickups razed by hoodlums. Credit: Ubuntu Times
As the protests became a rallying point for many, authorities claimed groups with sectional interests tried to exploit the campaigns for underhand motives. The demonstrations culminated on October 20 when soldiers opened fire on protesters at the Lekki Tollgate in the commercial capital, Lagos, killing at least 12, according to Amnesty International.
The turmoil that followed the shooting left the country in shock. Thugs set fire to public and private properties in Lagos and other cities and attacked security personnel. In Oyigbo, the government said IPOB, which has tried to revive the defunct 1960s-era Biafra Republic, went on a rampage and razed police offices and killed officers.
The Police Area Command Oyigbo set on fire by hoodlums before attacks by soldiers. Credit: Ubuntu Times
An intervention by the army was thwarted as a patrol team sent from a nearby military base was overrun. Six soldiers and four police officers died.
“Since its proscription, the group has carried out intermittent processions in parts of Rivers State, especially in Oyigbo and some notorious suburbs in Port Harcourt Local Government Areas,” Gov Wike said in a broadcast on October 30 referring to IPOB.
“This evil, wicked and audacious action resulted in the unnecessary loss of scores of lives, including soldiers and police officers, and the destruction of both public and private properties, including police stations, court buildings and business premises.”
In interviews, residents said hoodlums also raided a courthouse and vandalized shops. Looting subsided after police and soldiers were dispatched to the area and a 24-hour curfew imposed. The attack soon degenerated to a confrontation between the thugs and soldiers, leading to the killing of soldiers, according to witnesses.
Killing the Innocent
That was the trigger of the siege. Residents said the army deployed more troops, who without systematically going after the attackers who by this time had fled the area, descended on unarmed residents.
Locals said at least 200 soldiers were deployed to cordon the bubbling district. They arrived in armored vehicles and went house to house and picked young men and loaded them into their trucks and took them to their base in Obehie in neighboring Abia State. Those who resisted were shot, according to witnesses.
Most residents refused to give their names or allow to be quoted over safety concerns. One elderly man told Ubuntu Times how a group of young men chased by soldiers around the Kom-Kom area ran into the Imo River swamp having reached the end of the road. He said soldiers fired into the water, killing the fleeing men.
At Afam Road roundabout, Ubuntu Times saw a burnt Volvo wagon car which residents said was used as an ambulance to convey a corpse to the mortuary when it ran into soldiers. They said after the driver explained his mission to the soldiers, he was chased off and the vehicle set ablaze.
Residents said soldiers killed several young people and their bodies taken away. Most of those detained and taken to the military based were yet to be released when an Ubuntu Times reporter visited the area.
Monica Chikwem, a resident of the area, narrated how her pastor’s son, a mechanical engineering graduate who recently got a job, was killed by a stray bullet. She said his body was left at home for two days since there was no way to move his body to the mortuary due to the soldiers’ blockade of all entry and exit points. The body was eventually smuggled to the mortuary through a bush path.
Chikwem said for 10 days, they lived in constant fear as bullets fired by soldiers fell occasionally on their roof. With total curfew in place, they had nowhere to buy food and other consumables and survived on eating premature crops nearby.
Another resident, John Nworgu, narrated how bullets pierced through his son’s leg who was trying to go through a back road to buy food for the family. Nworgu’s son survived.
During a recent visit to Oyigbo after the siege was lifted, one of the most talked about deaths was that of Queen Nwazuo, a 26-year-old polytechnic student, who was struck in the neck while at a hair salon. Nwazuo died before she could get medical assistance.
A poster showing a fatal injury on Queen Nwazuo, one of the persons struck by a stray bullet fired by soldiers. Credit: @OgbonnayaMbaka on Twitter
An Ubuntu Times reporter said almost all the homes he entered and people approached for interviews had tales of woes about the siege and accused the army of highhandedness.
On November 3, the Guardian, one of the country’s most respected and popular newspapers, reported how its reporter visited a house in Oyigbo and saw four soldiers knocking hysterically on a gate to a building. The soldiers screamed: “If you don’t come out and open the gate, we will burn the building and kill you and nothing will happen,” according to the paper.
When one of the residents finally opened the gate, the troops ordered her to call out everyone in the compound and as residents gathered, one soldier yelled: “The army is very angry with this community because your people killed our colleagues, we are here to search for certain persons and you should obey everything we say, anyone that argues or disobeys, we will kill the person.” However, after a search of the compound, the paper said officers left, saying: “Our target person is not here”.
Ethnic Concerns
Residents interviewed by Ubuntu Times said they suspected the military operation had an ethnic undertone, claiming that soldiers had asked some men they arrested if they were Igbo. The claim, not independently verified, appeared to draw strength from comments by the governor and historical sentiments.
A place of worship, synagogue, razed and destroyed by soldiers in Oyigbo. Credit: Ubuntu Times
In his broadcast, Wike said “Rivers State belongs to the indigenous people of Rivers State” and warned that “as a stranger element with strange political ideology therefore, IPOB has no legal or moral right to invade Rivers State or any part therefore at its behest; to disturb public peace, and subject lives and property to violence or threat of destruction under any guise.” He added: “We appeal to leaders of the various ethnic groups residents in the State to ensure that their members respect the sensibilities of our people and refrain from provocations and acts of hooliganism that could breach peace and security in the State.”
The group, IPOB, is predominantly Igbo, and the Rivers government said the group has used Oyigbo, which has a large Igbo population, as an outpost. The first attempt to create Biafra from Nigeria in the 1960s resulted in a civil war that killed over a million people. Since then, the Nigerian state has brutally crushed groups that align with that cause, often killing many.
Over years too, non-Igbo groups in the region have rejected the agitation for Biafra, and some Igbo cluster tribal groups have even denied having the same tribal roots with the Igbo, despite apparent linguistic ties. Some Igbo activists say the town raided by the soldiers, originally called Obigbo (meaning the heart of Igbo) was renamed Oyigbo in the early 1980s to spite the group.
In the chaos that unfolded in Oyigbo, some of the buildings reportedly razed by troops were synagogues assumed to be the worship place of IPOB members. The IPOB group has identified as Jewish and its members worship in synagogues, noticeably varied from the predominant practice of Christianity in the area. One synagogue was razed by troops near the timber market and another at Okpulor was demolished on November 9. But those interviewed said the synagogues were open for all persons especially the Sabbatarians, beyond IPOB.
Authorities Deny
Amidst criticisms following the attack, Gov Wike denied ordering soldiers to kill Igbo in the town. Speaking on television on November 2, the governor said the accusation was “politically-motivated.”
“It’s not true that I ordered the military to kill Igbo in Oyigbo. So, what about the Igbo living elsewhere in the state? Are they also being killed?” He added: “I will not fold my arms and watch criminals destroy my state, if those few criminals are Igbos then they should know that I will not allow them.”
Wike, however, said security agencies during their search of some residents in Oyigbo, saw shrines with IPOB flags and a picture of the group’s leader, Nnamdi Kanu.
Usually busy streets of Oyigbo remain scanty weeks after a deadly assault by soldiers killed many in the town. Credit: Ubuntu Times
The army also denied targeting a particular group. It also denied killing residents, even when the evidence shows the contrary. The spokesperson for Six Division of the Nigerian Army in Port Harcourt, Major Charles Ekeocha, said the army only entered houses that were possible hideouts of “hoodlums”.
“We lost six soldiers in that area, their weapons were carted away, it was planned and executed,” he was quoted by Guardian as saying. “The exercise going on there now is searching and identifying houses used by the so-called IPOB members. We are searching those houses to see whether we can get all those rifles they took away from our soldiers, that is what we are doing, we are professional about it. I don’t know about firing of weapons.”
Usually busy streets of Oyigbo remain scanty weeks after a deadly assault by soldiers killed many in the town. Credit: Ubuntu Times
On November 18, the king of Oyigbo, Mike Nwaji, urged the governor and the military authorities to caution soldiers against the indiscriminate arrests of residents in the area, according to the Lagos-based newspaper, Punch.
“Even if the person is a member of IPOB, I overheard the governor said that the activities of IPOB in Rivers State has been proscribed. I didn’t hear the governor say search them from house to house, but the governor said their activities, meetings, gatherings.
“So, any person going round and telling soldiers to come and see IPOB (should stop); the main people who committed the offense had all run away.”
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