Former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu has explained why the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is a terrorist group…
“Who tagged IPOB members as terrorists? Was it Buhari who tagged them as terrorists? The answer is no! Was it Buhari who proscribed them? The answer is no! It is only the people who live within the same enclave and area with them that said no, we will no longer collectively tolerate this activities of IPOB members.”
The president has not said anything on this issue. The people are fond of attributing everything to Buhari. The governors went to Enugu for a meeting where the group was proscribed. In the first place, some of the governors mismanaged this issue. Go and ask Nwazurike, he is still alive; when he was doing this Biafran agitation, there was a way we treated him. We gave him guidelines and warned him not do certain things.”
“We told him as governors then that his group had the right to carry the Biafran flag but anytime they wanted to carry it, I usually invoked the law of the land and made it binding on them because that was the right thing expected of me as governor. You cannot be going to the market women to carry their foods and be eating. You cannot go to a woman selling akara with the little money on her, and carry her akara and eat.”
“The boys would sometimes see a woman selling food by the roadside and decide to eat all her food without paying her. When I was governor, whenever such incident was brought to my attention, I usually applied the law instantly. The law is very clear. People should stop the sentiment, this is about saving this nation, it is about saving our people, it is about bringing back economic prosperity to the South-East.”
“When a court of law had given an order? It was not Justice Nyako speaking, it was the law of Nigeria speaking. If Kanu was dissatisfied with that ruling, the day he came out, he should have approached the appellate court where five justices would decide on his case. He is destroying business in Igbo land. The GDP of this area is going down every day.”
“The people who used to come to Aba to buy shoes, dresses and all kinds of products and materials are no longer coming. There is no government that will leave a section of his country to be mismanaged this way.”
“I really don’t understand why someone should sew uniforms for a group of boys under his control and start to make statements which he is not expected to say claiming that he disagrees with the law of the land. Disobedience to the law of the land itself can make you to be tagged as a terrorist because we have a law, the constitution.”
“I am an Igbo man to the heart, I don’t care what anybody says, I don’t pretend and I have never asked any president to give me a job. Since I left office as governor, two presidents have approached me and offered to give me federal appointments but I rejected their offers. I even told one of them that I have a court case with you (your government) and he said, “Oh yes, I know about the case. It is political because I have read every file about the case.”
“The former president is the late Umaru Yar’Adua, may his soul rest in peace. I don’t want to go into further details because the case is still in court.”
– Culled from The PUNCH