comment on the development were answered but he insisted that the matter will be discussed today (Sunday) when he will be in Lagos for a parade.
IPOB, in a statement, yesterday, said the October 1, 2017, deadline given by the Arewa coalition for the Igbo to vacate northern states was a justification for its demand for the Ndigbo freedom from Nigeria and its call for a referendum to decide the fate of the ethnic nationalities.
The statement by its Media and Publicity Secretary, Mr Emma Powerful, thanked the Arewa Elders Forum, AEF, Arewa Youths and Arewa Consultative Forum, “for seeing sense in what IPOB has been saying about the need for a referendum to be conducted in Nigeria to decide the fate of the component ethnic nationalities criminally lumped together by the British in 1914.”
It went on: “Biafrans in general also wish to thank these vocal Northerners for at least having the courtesy to issue advance warning this time before embarking on their routine massacre of Igbos and other Biafrans living in Northern Nigeria.
“We are particularly grateful to Arewa Youths and Elders for having the decency to give us prior notice before their routine slaughter commences. We promise to adhere to your warning to leave northern Nigeria because a word is enough for the wise.
“Biafrans and other southerners should start packing their properties to come down to the South. We also advice the Northern youths and their Elders to keep it on because all they have done is exercise their right to free speech which is not a crime under any law known to man. We are therefore against those calling for the arrest of these Arewa Youths and their Elders.
“It is abundantly evident from the genocidal statements coming from certain influential segments of Northern Nigeria that the British socio-political experimentation and economic fraud we know today as a country, should not have been created in the first place. IPOB is very much aware of the covert blackmail and implied threat inherent in the utterances emanating from Northern Nigeria.”
‘Time-bomb’
Joining the fray, South-South leaders, traditional rulers, clergymen and rights groups, lashed out at NEF, accusing it of setting a potential time-bomb for the break-up of the country with its support for the Northern Youth Coalition on the quit notice to the Igbo in the North.
A former military administrator of Akwa Ibom State and leader of the Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, Otuekong Idongesit Nkanga; Bishop of Anglican Communion, Calabar Diocese, Rt Rev Tunde Adeleye; Ibedaowei of Opokuma, Bayelsa State, HRM King Okpoitari Diongoli, among others, said it was indecent for northern elders to also claim that the resources used to develop the country before the advent of oil were from the North.
But a former Secretary General, NUPENG, Chief Frank Kokori, also from the South-South, and a few other leaders, said they did not believe that anybody could break Nigeria.
Nkanga said: “If they said they used their groundnut and other cash crops to develop Nigeria, let us use the
