• Three shot, many injured
Three persons were shot while many injured when armed Nigerian soldiers invaded the home of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, at Afaraukwu, Umuahia in Abia State yesterday evening in a bid to arrest him.
But acording to report, the soldiers failed in their mission, as members of IPOB formed a human shield and stoically resisted the soldiers from gaining entry into Kanu’s home.
According to eyewitnesses account, the enraged soldiers resorted to shooting sporadically and in the process felled some persons. However it could not be confirmed if the gunfire led to fatalities.
Giving an account of the incident, Kanu said the Nigerian Army had stormed his home in an amoured tank and about three Toyata Hilux vans loaded with heavily armed soldiers.
The IPOB leader alleged that they were shooting in every direction as they approached his father’s compound, causing panic and pandemonium among residents of Afaraukwu in Umuahia.
He said they had tried to gain entry into his father’s compound but IPOB members quickly formed a human shield around the compound and stoutly resisted them.
“I was sleeping this evening (Sunday) when suddenly I was woken up by the blaring of sirens. Initially, I thought it was the Commissioner of Police who lives in the neighbourhood that was returning home. But the blaring persisted and was followed up by sporadic gunshots.
“They wanted to bulldoze their way into the palace but IPOB members formed a human shield and resisted them. They wanted to break the shield and fired at three persons and wounded others before leaving. Everybody including children were running away in confusion.”
Kanu, however, vowed that no amount of intimidation would make him abandon the struggle for Biafra’s independence.
“They want to use force and beat us into submission because they have lost the argument but they will fail. They want to trigger war but we won’t oblige them because we are committed to our non-violent philosophy,” he added.
Kanu said he did not receive any invitation from any security agency and wondered why the army had invaded his home.
In his reaction, Kanu’s father, who is the traditional ruler of Afaraukwu community, Eze Israel Kanu described the invasion as “unwarranted and shocking”.
The monarch said his son had committed no crime to warrant the military invasion of his palace and incessant intimidation.
One of the wounded IPOB members was hospitalised at the Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia, where doctors are battling to save his life.
When THISDAY visited the hospital, one of the doctors on duty in the emergency unit said the IPOB member sustained a gun shot wound in “the thigh region”.
The doctor, who pleaded for anonymity, said an x-ray would be conducted on the injured person to determine the extent of the gun shot wound, but added that he was responding to treatment.
Efforts to reach the Public Relation Officer, 14 Army Brigade, Ohafia, Major Gbadamosi Oyegoke, proved to be abortive, as he did not pick his calls.
Prior to the incident in Kanu’s home, IPOB and other groups in the South-east had condemned the military operation, Operation Python Dance II, scheduled to begin in the geopolitical zone later this month.
IPOB, in a statement signed by its publicity secretary, Mr. Emma Powerful described the operation as a “wickedly undemocratic silent Jihadi war unleashed on peaceful Biafran populations in order to complete the extermination of the Igbo race under the pretext of military exercise in a peaceful civilian environment”.
IPOB said the act was primitive criminal and intended to intimidate and provoke and must not go unchallenged by men and women of good conscience.
“This latest attempt to use military show of force in Biafraland to deal with legitimate peaceful agitation for self determination vindicates IPOB’s position that Nigeria is irredeemably primitive and incapable of human development.
“Where on earth is it heard that combat ready troops are deployed within the borders of a country to deal with a non-violent civil matter; only in Nigeria.
“It makes a mockery of the role of the military and a nonsense of the constitution that soldiers can be ordered by one army officer without the permission of the Senate, to kill civilian populations in an area devoid of any conflict.
“This is one of the many reasons we IPOB cannot share the same geopolitical space with people that can hardly reason like humans.
“The Nigerian Army is only strong when it comes to killing unarmed peaceful civilians. We advice (Lt.-Gen-Tukur) Buratai not to march his army into Biafraland under the cover of Operation Python Dance because IPOB is agitating for self-determination in a peaceful manner. We have no arms and will never resort to bearing arms.
In its condemnation of the military’s planned operation, Onitsha-based rights groups, Coalition of Human Rights Organisations in collaboration with International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) also condemned the launch of Operation Python Dance II by the Nigerian Army in the Southeast geopolitical region, saying that it was a bastardisation of the security of the people of the region.
The statement issued yesterday by Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety, Aloysius Attah of the Civil Liberties Organisation and others, said the operation was nothing short of an “open confrontation and daring affront on the will and psyche of the people of the region”.
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