The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu not to fall for the antics of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), insisting that IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu must face trial.
According to Punch, In a statement Saturday by its spokesman, Abdul Azeez Suleiman, CNG lamented the insecurity plaguing southeastern Nigeria and called on federal authorities to resist the extortion campaign that used Kanu’s release as a precondition for sustainable peace in the land.
Suleiman further appealed to the federal authorities to ignore the unpatriotic demand for Kanu’s release by the Igbo leaders and to resolutely carry through with the prosecution of Kanu.
The statement reads: “The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) takes cognizance of the events unfolding in Nigeria, particularly the relentless mayhem perpetrated by certain interest groups in the Southeast and ignited by the armed forces and terror tactics of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and their co-authors of mindless violence and separatism.
He noted that the violence has been ignited, incessantly fueled, and carried out by the armed forces and terror tactics of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and their mindless violence and separatist co-authors.
The CNG has been closely watching and studying with considerable restraint and maturity these events and actions being perpetrated against the Nigerian state, against Nigerians in general, and the northerners in particular.
But more recently, there has been the brutal enforcement of a week-long illegal stay-at-home order affecting even other Nigerians living as minorities in southeastern communities, and the renewed determination of Igbo leaders and elders to demand the unconditional release of IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu.
Things have reached the point where silence has become complicity and inaction is no longer an option.
The federal authorities must resist the campaign of Ibo intimidation that makes Kanu’s release a precondition for sustainable peace in the land and ask the following question:
what is the relationship between the more than 500 personnel of various paramilitary groups who were indiscriminately attacked and killed while on duty at various checkpoints as a result of incitement by Kanu What will become of them?
As Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, how and in what words will the President encourage and detain the officers of the various other armed forces if the persons who incited the killing of their colleagues are released without trial?”
The statement further asks:
“What will be the position of the families and communities of those murdered, dispossessed, and displaced as a result of the hate campaign and propaganda carried out by Nnamdi Kanu and sponsored by his regional and ethnic collaborators?
How would the authorities react if other communities and peoples were encouraged to take the law into their hands in the same manner as the Kanu and IPOB?”
‘What would happen to Nigeria if leaders and elders of other ethnic groups chose to walk away from justice by demanding unconditional release for their errant sons?
Politics1 (
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