The Pan-Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, umbrella body of the Niger Delta elders, Wednesday, stated that the ultimatum by Arewa youth groups on Igbos to vacate the North by October is more treasonable than the offence allegedly committed by Nnamdi Kanu of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB.
PANDEF in a statement by a member of the Central Working Committee, CWC, Dr. Alfred Mulade, said the call was wrong and that those behind it should be arrested and prosecuted without delay.
Mulade said, “We insist that this call by Arewa youths must be nipped in the bud, and the Federal Government should, as in the case of Nnamdi Kanu, arrest, detain and prosecute them for treasonable felony, with immediate effect. In this matter of threat to the corporate existence of Nigeria, there must be no sacred cows.
“PANDEF considers this statement by the Arewa Youths as tragic as and more treasonable than the offence allegedly committed by Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB, for which he was held in detention for about a year.
“Not only is this statement a potent threat to the corporate unity of the country, but in our view, appears the most dangerous statement ever made by any group to the unity and existence of Nigeria since the end of the civil war.”
“We must not forget how we came into the civil war that lasted for 30 months, and the avoidable calamities it wrought on our country. 50 years thereafter now, things have changed a great deal. Loyalties and commitments should be total of all Nigerians to a Nigeria where all Nigerians are free to stay in any part of the country, free from any form of molestation and discrimination, a Nigeria where we are all each other’s brother’s keeper, in a Nigeria where no one is superior to the other, and where no one threatens to drive any other group of Nigerians away from any part of the country,” the group added.
“This statement by the Arewa Youths which strikes at the very roots of the Nigeria we believe in, is, indeed, an attempt to divide and breakup the country, whose unity is guaranteed by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”, it added.
PANDEF further called on all northern state governments, elders, particularly the Arewa Consultative Assembly in whose House the press conference was held to take concrete steps to reassure the Ibos and indeed, all Nigerians that they were free to stay in the North without any form of molestations.
The group added, “Whilst we do not support Nnamdi Kanu, and the
