The apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo has rejected the bounty placed on IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu by a coalition of northern groups.
Ohanaeze in an angry reaction on Friday told the northern group to place the bounty on the Miyetti Allah group and Boko Haram terrorists.
It also rejected the insinuation that northerners were getting killed in the southern region of the country.
Naija News recalls a northern group known as the Northern Consensus Movement(NCM) had declared the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu wanted.
Speaking during a press conference on Thursday by its president, Dr. Auwal Abdullahi, the group also placed an N100 million bounty on Kanu.
The group said: “We are declaring Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB and ESN wanted for the killings, destructions of properties of Northerners residing and undertaking their lawful businesses in the South-Eastern part of Nigeria.”
But Ohanaeze Ndigbo, reacting in a statement by its Secretary-General, Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro on Friday said Miyetti Allah and terrorist groups are responsible for killings in the country.
It also slammed the northern coalition as a faceless group being sponsored by northern 2023 presidential aspirants who want to scuttle the chances of an Igbo president emerging as the next leader of Nigeria.
The statement reads, “we would not want to join issues with faceless groups that are not known in the north but in as much as that they are making some attempts to cause crisis in the country by ensuring that the groups not only placing a bounty on Nnamdi Kanu over alleged killings, they are out to escalate the tension in the country.
“For the purpose of record and from the last time, there had not been any killing, except the accidental killing of Ahmed Gulak in Owerri. There had not been killing recorded anywhere in the southeast about northern people except some nefarious activities of unknown gunmen and killer Fulani herdsmen who had been attacking police stations and government facilities and killing both Igbos and indigenes from other parts of the country.
“We want to tell the groups being sponsored by some northern presidential aspirants to place the bounty on the new leader of Boko Haram terrorist group, that had just emerged after the death of Shekau. Nnamdi Kanu has an address in London or in Germany where his headquarters of IPOB is. There is no need of searching for Kanu. He is not in Nigeria, he has an address in London as a British citizen. They should just use the N100 million bounty given to them by northern politicians, who are trying to destabilize the southeast to have easy root for the 2023 presidential ticket of major political parties in Nigeria, especially of the PDP.
“They should place the bounty on Shekau’s successor who has no address, who is living in the forest, the terrorist group that took arms against the government for the last six years. They should not cry more than the bereaved, we will take care of the southeast and ensure normalcy returns. As far as we are concerned, that bounty is inconsequential and political. It is not necessary, only a means to continue to heat up tension in the polity”.
Meanwhile, the former lawmaker representing Kaduna Central senatorial district, Shehu Sani, has condemned the Northern groups that placed a bounty on the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.
Senator Sani while reacting to the development, noted that the group should have channelled their efforts towards ending the terrorism and banditry currently ravaging their region.
This article was originally published on Nigeria News