IPOB Fails To Stop Ohaneze Summit In Awka

It was an anti-climax for the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as their plan to scuttle Ohaneze Ndigbo’s summit on the restructuring of Nigeria in Awka, Anambra state, failed.

The group had since last week insisted that the summit will not hold as they have mobilized their members to disrupt the programme.

Spokesman of the outlawed group, Mr. Emma Powerful, had boasted on Saturday that the summit was a “battle between good and evil, light versus darkness.

“On Monday the 21st of May 2018 at Ekwueme Square in Awka, the long suffering down trodden people of the East will rise up to say enough is enough. Our 50 years of Fulani captivity, aided and abated by Ohaneze Ndigbo will finally come to an end. All agents of darkness and iniquity with red caps, recruited by the caliphate immediately after the war in 1970 to serve their interest and enslave Igboland, will be exposed.”

However, the pro-Biafra group was outnumbered by the sheer size of security deployment to Awka, a situation that caused traffic chaos and saw people trekking long distances to their locations.

This newspaper learnt that many people could not gain access to the venue as they thoroughly screened and those who could not identify themselves were turned back.

But the few who managed to sneak in heckled former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, as he presented the position of Ndigbo on the restructuring. According to Soludo, the demands of Ndigbo include; a new constitution, convocation of a constituent assembly, six-year tenure for the president and vice presidents from the geopolitical zones with the VPs holding key ministries, rotation of the president among the geopolitical zones, scrapping of local government system, creation of additional state for the South East before considering creation of more states in the country, among other demands.

His speech was severally interrupted by mainly youths and women who later trouped out of the arena, insisting on Biafra Republic.