TheCable

Protesters from various civil society organisations stormed the US embassy in Abuja on Thursday to register their displeasure over the opposition to the declaration of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as a terrorist group.

Russell Brooks, spokesman of the embassy, had said under US laws, IPOB is not a terrorist group.

But Richard Augustine, national coordinator of Stand Up for Peace Movement, said it was annoying for the embassy to take such a position.

“For the records, IPOB was declared a terrorist organization by the order of a competent court of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  This order was properly captured as the “Terrorism (Prevention) (Proscription Order) Notice, 2017” as contained in Volume 104 of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Official Gazette,” he said.

“We, therefore, wonder when Nigeria became a colony of the United States of America for its diplomat to be insinuating that the laws of Nigeria amount to nothing if they are not domesticated as US laws.

“IPOB and its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, saturated the public space with hate speech and did not seem it fit to urge restraint. We know the US outpost was monitoring the situation.

“The Embassy was there when Kanu and IPOB bragged about possessing nuclear weapons that could decimate a third of Nigeria and it looked the other way even though we all know the same country would froth in the mouth each time North Korea and nuclear weapon occur in the same sentence.

“The US, on the strength of its experience, should learn to do the right thing and be told in clear terms that Nigeria will continue to prove to be difficult for such as we respect our laws and must be protected at all times .

“Our charge is to Nigerians to for once shake off any sense of mental and psychological shackles. If the US were as all powerful they would have been able to deal with the tens of daily deaths from gun violence in their country.”

On Wednesday, Lai Mohammed, minister of information, rejected the position of US on IPOB.