By Adadareporters
The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Sunday, lauded its security arm, Eastern Security Network, for ensuring that crimes orchestrated by alleged herders from Sahel Region are curbed in South East.
Mr Emma Powerful, the head, media and publicity of IPOB, stated this in a release. He said despite all odds, ESN had lived to the expectations of its establishment.
He said, “Its job is the defence of the length and breadth of Biafraland from the ravages of killer herdsmen from the Sahel. For it has come to our notice that some faceless individuals, perhaps propelled by hunger and deprivation and under the pay of some inconsequential political entities in Nigeria, appear to be busy on social media trying very hard to mislead the public into blaming ESN for insecurity bedeviling the South-East. Their attempt to change the narrative about the nobility of our movement is bound to fail.”
He said those fighting ESN were nowhere to be found when killer Fulani herdsmen from all over the Sahel region were marauding through farmlands, forests and villages in Igboland, as well as “pillaging, looting, raping and slaughtering our men, women and children”.
He continued, “The situation became so deplorable that some Igbo governors that summoned the courage to call 82 Division of the Nigerian Army at Enugu and later the Presidency found to their shock that their calls were ignored.
“They resorted to begging the federal government of Nigeria, through newspaper publications, to intervene and rescue them. At a point our mothers stopped going to the farm. Fear and terror gripped our land. None of these quislings ranting online raised a voice of condemnation at the despicable cowardice of the so-called political class in the East in the face of this mass slaughter of their people.”
IPOB mentioned some areas that were attacked to include Enugu, Ebonyi, Anambra, Abia, Imo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Benue and Imo, adding, “How can any same Igbo person forget Nimbo and Uzo-Uwani? Or have we all forgotten that the sustained slaughter of the innocent by Fulani herdsmen was the sole reason why our leader formed the formidable Eastern Security Network (ESN)?”
According to him, “The sole purpose for the existence of ESN is to checkmate the excesses of these killer herdsmen from the Sahel and to ensure that no inch of the Land of the Ancients (Igboland) is forcibly taken over and occupied by killers disguised as herdsmen. IPOB will never condone the mistakes made by other ethnic groups that allowed their ancestral lands to be forcibly seized and converted to a mini-caliphate, to be visited on Igbo people or replicated anywhere in Igboland or across the entirety of Biafraland for that matter.
“Not many people in Nigeria today know that a sizeable chunk of Yorubaland, Oyo State in particular, is under forcible occupation by herdsmen. This was what some Yoruba agitators were fighting against or have we all forgotten?
“Today no Yorubaman would dare enter a forest renamed Gambari in Oyo State that is the heart of the Yoruba race. Is Gambari a Yoruba name? Tiv people of Benue today have forfeited their ancestral land, which has long been renamed Katsina Ala, meaning a mini-Katsina in another person’s land.
“The last time we checked, Gambari as a name is not an indigenous Yoruba name, neither is Katsina Ala a name anyone can associate with native Tivi people.”
He advised well-meaning easterners to be grateful to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and ESN for putting a permanent stop to the relentless advance of killer herdsmen from the Sahel who are hellbent on conquering indigenous populations all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
“Like the Yoruba Amotekun formed to give legitimacy to the quest to eradicate killer herdsmen from Yoruba farms and forests, ESN is here to protect the people, nothing more nothing less. If other Nigerians are comfortable with killer herdsmen taking over their forests and farmlands and slaughter their people at will, that is their prerogative. Such state of affairs will never be replicated in Biafraland. As long as IPOB exists, Fulani herdsmen will never take over any inch of territory in Biafraland,” Powerful said.
He called on those advocating the banning of ESN to first disband hordes of killer herdsmen invading “our forests”, adding that, “Miyetti Allah that is their public face must be banned and open grazing abolished; so long as these entities are in existence, ESN shall continue in their duty to defend Biafraland.”
According to him, “Those mischievously linking ESN and by extension IPOB to ongoing insecurity in Igboland are not only misguided but are jokers. These attention seekers know those sponsoring the destruction of Igboland in exchange for enlarged security budget with which they hope to contest for vice presidential slot come the next election in 2027 if President Tinubu decides not to run.
“Cheap playground bully tactics and empty propaganda against IPOB never worked in the past and it will not work now. People should instead be grateful to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB for saving the entire Middle Belt, Oduduwa and Biafraland from the devastating effect of RUGA. If not for IPOB, everybody would be living under RUGA today. ESN deserves praise. In the same measure those bringing mayhem to the south-east should be dealt with without pity.”
