The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has reacted to comments by Chairman of South-East Governors Forum and Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi on the recently-launched Eastern Security Network (ESN).
Umahi had described the launching of the security network as “laughable”, adding that the geopolitical zone did not need IPOB’s security network.
He said the South-East remained the most peaceful zone in the country.
Mocking IPOB Leader Nnamdi Kanu, Umahi said, “Our region remains the safest and nobody can controvert this. And so, our brother said he has formed security outfit for the southeast. It is very laughable and should be totally ignored.
“I commend very highly the Southeast Governors. It is only in the Southeast that the leaders are being castigated openly.”
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In a Sunday statement, IPOB said that the Eastern Security Network has come to stay.
In the statement signed by its spokesman, Emma Powerful, the group said that Umahi’s comment was a “shameful display of their (governors’) irredeemable enslavement and loyalty to their caliphate slavemasters who in the first place appointed them Governors”.
According to the group, the governors ought to have commended the initiative rather than condemning it.
“They only further exposed their emptiness and detachment from the people. At a time when well-meaning individuals and groups from entire Southern Nigeria and Middle Belt are hailing the setting up of ESN, the so-called Governors are busy advertising their opposition to the people they claim to be leading. Anyway, they never had the mandate of the people. So, we are not surprised.
“But our message to the treacherous South-East Governors and their South-South counterparts is that ‘the train has since left the station’ and can’t reverse its course. It’s pretty too late to have a rethink.
“The people have got what they long desired which the cowardly Governors failed to give them because of selfish political interest,” IPOB’s statement further read.