New groups may rise up to counter IPOB in south-east, Umahi warns
David Umahi, governor of Ebonyi state, says groups may emerge in the south-east to counter the secessionist agitations of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
The governor spoke on Wednesday when he featured on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.
On Tuesday, Enyinnaya Abaribe, senior minority leader, had said there are more than 30 separatist organisations in the south-east.
When asked if he agrees with Abaribe, Umahi said: “He is talking from the point of his information but as a governor, I don’t see that.”
Umahi said the two separatist groups in the region are IPOB and the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).
The governor said while MASSOB has never been violent, IPOB dishes out messages of threats and killings.
“MASSOB has never been violent and they are approachable and they tend to reason with us but these other people, IPOB, their command is never in the country and every one of them stays out and dishes out messages of bitterness and messages of threats and fear and killings and they are not here with us to feel the pains,” he said.
“So, these are just the two groups that I can talk about but I fear that if IPOB does not call their people to order and stop these threats and killings and all that, other groups will rise up to counter it because there is no way south-east would be grounded.
“There is no way south-east will be sitting at home while other parts of the country will be doing businesses whereas we are the people that should be moving because we earn our living by moving.”
On IPOB’s sit-at-home order, Umahi said it won’t be obeyed by south-easterners if there is enough security presence in the region.
“If you have a policeman to everybody, nobody is going to obey any sit-at-home, nobody is going to obey that. We are going to do what we have been doing to safeguard the lives of our people because we’ve got the confidence of our people and that you cannot have Biafra by the way they are going about it,” he said.
The governor also shut down the insinuation that criminals from outside the south-east are perpetrating crimes in the region.
“We know that it is our people that are killing our people,” he added.
Dear governor Dave Umahi, you are completely away from reality. Are you going to create the group you talked about or what. I used to think of you as a genuine leader until your greed and selfishness took you where you are today in politics. Its your choice at the detriment of your people. Nigeria is not and will never remain one under this sort of government you represent.
He must be seriously working underground to create a monster which will consume him.