Alhaji Sagir Muhammad, the leader of defunct Arewa Peoples Congress, in the interview granted to the Vanguard, has stated that Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and their leader Nnamdi Kanu has a secret agenda.
Muhammad, also known as a front line General Ibrahim Babangida supporter, said “their hidden agenda is to declare Biafra and then go recolonize the South-South.”
“They would go and within a question of less than one month they
would capture all those South-South and colonise the oil fields that is
the agenda of IPOB. If you
look at the East, it is land-locked; they
don’t have any serious minerals apart from coal.
“Even the geography and geology of the East is so poor that even
to build a good house they cannot unless you build a house in a bush
because it’s all bush, it’s all forested and that is why you find the
majority of the elite Igbo are now half of the owners of the houses in
Abuja.
“If the Indigenous People of Biafra are now saying that they want
to have Biafra what are you going to do with more than three quarters
of the Igbo who are outside the East?
“Those in Kano, those in Lagos what are you going to do with
then? Will you take all those people back to Biafra? They have no houses
to live, they have no means of livelihood. They make money outside and
not in the East so you find that they are crawling into fantasy world.”
Muhammad also expressed his thoughts about an upsurge in the
activities of the insurgents despite claims that they have been
technically defeated.
He said that the insurgency is the most difficult aspect of military operation.
“You don’t know your enemy, you don’t know where he is, you don’t
know the kind of tactics he uses which is not conventional tactics, you
don’t know the kind of logistic he uses and you don’t know where the
logistics are or where they are hidden,” Muhammad added.
The former Arewa leader supported the idea of the dialogue with the insurgents.
“If there is no dialogue how do you stop the remnants,
supporters, children of those killed from metamorphosing into another
insurgents? There has to be a way of making them know that what they are
doing is not helping them and that their concept of Jihad is off mark,” he said.
Since the arrest of IPOB leader in October last year, young people,
mainly from Igbos, have been protesting in south-east Nigeria and the
oil-rich Delta region.
The activists claim that they have been discriminated against by those in power.
The Nigerian government has always claimed that most of the issues
the Biafra activists are complaining about are not unique to southern
part of the country.
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