As the secret trial of
its leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, is set to commence next month, the
Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has hit out at those supporting the
secret trial with hooded witnesses, saying they should read history to
know there was no precedence.
IPOB was peeved that
some commentators, especially in the social media have been disparaging
its leader and supporting the decision of the federal government to try
him using masked witnesses with the excuse that the measure was needed
to protect those who would testify against Kanu.
But in a statement
issued by its Head of Media and Publicity, Emma Powerful, the Biafra
restoration movement said that those backing Kanu’s secret trial should
stop their “infantile digression and address the simple question of
whether the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was tried in secret when he was
tried and convicted of treason in 1963.
IPOB said that those
using Awolowo’s trial to justify the planned secret trial of Kanu were
misrepresenting facts as the charges against the IPOB leader is a lesser
offence compared to the treason charges leveled against the leader of
the defunct Action Group and godfather of Yoruba politics.
To drive home their position the IPOB head of media and publicity drenched Kanu’s traducers with these posers:
“Was Chief Obafemi
Awolowo's treason trial, mind you not treasonable felony, conducted in
public or secret? Another question you must answer is this, was the then
Action Group and today's IPOB the same? Which of the two do you
consider more dangerous, in view of how the former spread anarchy
through major Yoruba towns at the time? I put these questions to you in
the hope that you are a student of history.
According to IPOB, the
some social media commentators it referred to as “internet rats” have
forgotten that there is a discipline called history hence they
deliberately dish out false information devoid of facts and figures to
deceive and mislead the public.
“Chief Obafemi Awolowo
was charged, tried in the open and convicted of the more serious charge
of treason which is a capital offence. He was dumped in Calabar prison
until Ojukwu released him.
“Yes Chief Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu Ojukwu an Igbo man and leader of Biafra granted pardon to
Awolowo and released him to Yoruba people. It wasn't Hausa Fulani North
that released Chief Awolowo, it was a Biafran,” IPOB stated.
The group insisted that
its arguments were “verifiable historical facts cleverly hidden by the
hegemonies since the release of Chief Awolowo, hence all of you e-rats
continue to wallow in stupefying ignorance till date”.
“This is IPOB! We
deconstruct our enemies with facts and figures; that is why Nnamdi
Kanu's court case is a blessed opportunity for us Biafrans to lay bare
before the world and human conscience everything wrong with the
contraption called Nigeria and why it should not be one,” IPOB said.
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