* ex-APGA chair blasts Igbo lawmakers for keeping mum
More reactions continue to trail the detention of Nnamdi Kanu, Director of Radio Biafra and leader of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), as Ohanaeze Diaspora, an Igbo group, made up of Igbo in the Diaspora has called on the Federal Government to unconditionally release him and other detained activists today, Christmas Day.
Ohanaeze Diaspora noted that the failure of government to holistically address the underlying issues of marginalisation and restructuring for true federalism gives life to the separatist agitations.
President of the group, Biafra Buchi Diboh in a statement, said that the continuous incarceration of Kanu by the Department of State Security (DSS) after a Federal High Court granted him bail was undemocratic and illegal.
According to Diboh, the Nigerian Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and association, the right to self-determination which is an inalienable right of all indigenous people by virtue of which they can freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
“It is weird and intolerable that the Nigerian state won independence from the British colonial government in the first instance on the basis of the right to self-determination such that Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and other self-determination agitators were never arrested by the British colonial authorities in the course of advocating self-rule,” he said.
Continuing, Diboh said: “The Nigerian state has oddly chosen to maim, detain and kill those seeking self-rule on the same premise as the founding fathers did. We warn that no nation can ultimately be built or held together by force just as no marriage/association should be by force.”
Ex-APGA chair blasts S-East NASS members for keeping mum
Irked by Department of State Services’ (DSS) continued detention of Director of Radio Biafra and Leader, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, the immediate-past national chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and senatorial candidate of APGA in the forthcoming re-run election in the Anambra Central Senatorial zone, Chief Victor Umeh, has blamed all the National Assembly members from the South-East geo-political zone for keeping silent.
Umeh lampooned the lawmakers of South-Eastern zone, noting that in the face of Biafra’s agitation, “Our National Assembly members should have advised the Federal Government to release Nnamdi Kanu first and then intervene in the dispute to ensure that frayed nerves are calmed on the issue, instead of keeping silent while the agitation is escalating.”
-Vanguard
