In what looked like an attempt to set the records straight about the much publicised killings of members of the Indigenous People Of Biafra, IPOB, at Nkpor in Anambra State on May 30, 2016 during the remembrance ceremony of Biafra Heroes who died during the 1967 – 1970 Biafran war, the governor of Anambra State.
Willie Obiano, on Wednesday, August 9, 2017, tendered an unreserved apology to IPOB members—
He said it was not only regrettable that such a number of Biafra agitators were massacred but also sad that the impression held in some quarters that he was responsible for the massacre could not be substantiated.
The governor who spoke when he received the members of Biafran War Veterans led by General Joe Achuzie (Air Raid) at the Governor’s Lodge, Amawbia. The veterans were paying the governor a condolence visit over the recent death of his mother, Mrs. Christiana Obiano (Adinije).
Governor Obiano said that he could not have ordered the killing of those who voted for him in 2013 election. He also stated that he has a mentality that guides him in issues of conviction which made him against all opinions and vehemence from federal authorities to still go ahead to bury those that died during the civil war, less than a year into the life span of his administration.
“Abuja was against my plan to bury the victims of Biafran war, there was a lot of opposition to it from security agencies but I went on to bury our dead war heroes,” the governor said.
“As a young boy during the war, I knew what happened. I saw many dead bodies and I know the importance of according proper burial to the departed even more so those that departed in the painful and regrettable way as they did.
“So, I had to embrace all odds to bury them in an elaborate ceremony on the 12th of January 2015, less that one year into my administration.
“How then will I contemplate killing their off springs for the same reason of Biafra. I didn’t do that, I’m innocent of the name calling.”
The Anambra governor also confessed that the report the security agencies made available to him on the incident showed that nobody was killed. But that when he visited the hospitals – Menax Hospital and St. Charles Borromeo Hospital all in Onitsha – among others to see the victims and to provide succor to them, he was told at the hospitals that people were killed and that some of those killed and the injured were taken out of the state to neighbouring states as very many of them came from outside Anambra state.
He also said that he volunteered to pay the hospital bills of the victims but some of them refused his offer. He said that he is profoundly sorry for what had happened and affirmed that he has since then been battling to ensure that such doesn’t happen again in Anambra state.
While regretting the actions and inactions that led to the current agitation for Biafra, the governor said that he had told the President, General Muhammadu Buhari, that if what is being done for the Northeast or close to it was done for the Igbos after the war that there would have been no agitation for Biafra today.
