The Cross River State chapter of the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra has raised the alarm over the high cost of living in the state, alleging that people are dying as a result of hunger.
From indications, MASSOB said, so many Nigerians could no longer afford to buy basic food items due to inflation.
In a statement issued in Calabar on Tuesday by its Public Relations Officer, Mr. Okon Eyo Effiom, MASSOB said there were indications that the Nigerian state could no longer take care of its citizens.
The statement read in part, “Even at Christmas, a period characterised by celebration and merriment, many people could not afford to cook the common rice meal for their families. Rice is the basic staple during such time but because of high level of poverty in the land many families could not afford to buy it.
“The standard of living in the country has depreciated abysmally in just one year and the cost of basic items has quadrupled beyond the reach of the ordinary person. This has made the citizens to easily succumb to diseases and death while others who are unable to bear the situation are killing themselves.
“Between 2015 and this year, the cost of living has risen by over 500 per cent which is way beyond the ordinary citizen which accounts for the high death rate through disease and suicide amongst our people.”
The group said the state of affairs in the country had given credence to MASSOB’s struggle for secession through peaceful means.
“We want to leave the Nigerian state and build a nation of our own based on the vision of Ralph Uwazurike.
“Fifty-six years after the Nigerian civil war, injustice is still being perpetrated against the people of Biafra especially the minorities as seen with the devastation of Odi in Rivers State and the handing over of Bakassi to Cameroon by the Nigerian government.
“We hereby call on President Muhammadu Buhari to let the people of Biafra go so that we can decide our fate and build our nation instead of languishing in this unholy state called Nigeria,” it stated.