January 23,2023

The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) on Sunday kicked against a recent move by Igbo leaders for the unconditional release of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu.

The Council of Elders of the apex Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, had moved to organise a peace summit to address insecurity in the South-East

The council urged the Federal Government to release the IPOB leader as ordered by the court.

Former Abia State Governor, Orji Kalu and Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, had also volunteered to stand as sureties for Kanu if released by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The CNG spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, who reacted to the moves in a statement in Kaduna cautioned the Nigerian government against releasing the activist.

He also accused the Igbo leaders of shielding IPOB and other non-state actors masterminding violence in the region.

Suleiman said: “It is unpatriotic and unreasonable for leaders to openly shield IPOB and other authors of mindless violence and separatism who see it as their duty to actualise what their fathers started in 1966, namely to bring about the realisation of a separate State of Biafra through the force of arms and terrorist tactics

Today, everyone can see that the diabolical scheme planned and exhibited in the actions and clamours of IPOB, supported morally and politically by the vast majority of the plant and affrighted Igbo elite, politicians, traditional rulers, business persons, and the larger population of this ethnic group that has pushed Nigeria to the precipice.

“We are convinced that this renewed determined pressure from the Igbo leaders is part of a wider plot to see through the secession of the South-East from Nigeria. It is now real and cannot be avoided or deferred any longer without terrible consequences.

“As the representatives of various interest groups from Northern Nigeria, the CNG has watched and studied these events carefully and with considerable restraint and maturity, to the point of condoning and accommodating several unreasonable and unacceptable actions that have been perpetrated against Nigerians collectively, and Northerners in particular.

“Of late however, the calls for the unconditional release of Kanu have pushed matters to a point whereby silence has become complicity and inaction no longer an option with unprovoked evictions, attacks and killings of northerners in various parts of the South-East resulting from the hate campaigns and propaganda being conducted by regional and ethnic agitators solidly backed by their leaders