2019: No Election In Igboland, IPOB Renews Call For Poll Boycott
The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) yesterday resumed its call on the South East Zone to shun next year’s general election in the country.
The proscribed group has also insisted on a referendum and sovereign state of Biafra as part of conditions to end the renewed agitation, just as it demanded the immediate disclosure of the whereabouts of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu and his unconditional release.
The call came during a protest in Owerri, the Imo State capital, by hundreds of half-naked female members the group who were all cladded in black attire, and derided Nigeria as “a failed country that does not hold any prospect for the Igbo.”
Expectedly, the early morning protest precipitated a heavy traffic jam on all major roads and streets in the city. While stern-looking soldiers and mobile policemen were drafted to strategic locations to forestall breakdown of law and order.
The freedom fighting group vowed to disrupt the 2019 elections across the Southeast, warning that severe punishments will be meted out on those who will betray the renewed struggle for the actualization of the state of Biafra by conniving with “Nigerian agents to conduct election in Igbo land”.
They accused the Southeast governors and Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Igbo apex socio-cultural organisation of complicity in the unprovoked killing of unarmed Biafra agitators by supporting military operations in the Southeast.
Some of the various placards displayed by the protesting women, bore inscriptions such as, ‘no more election in Igbo land, we want Biafra’, ‘Nigeria is a fraud, we need Biafra’, ‘no more elections, we need a referendum’, ‘release Nnamdi Kanu now or face the wrath of God’, ‘we are tired of Nigeria’, among others.
