Magnus Eze, Enugu

A pro-Biafra group, the Biafra Nations Youth League (BNYL), has formed an alliance with southern Cameroon’s separatist group, Ambazonia, in their quest for secession from their respective countries to become independent nations.

Leaders of the two groups addressed the press as they rose from BNYL’s convention in Enugu, at the weekend.

BNYL leader, Princewill Chimezie said that the collaboration of the two agitating groups had been on for a long time but was being re-engineered to give stronger voice for their self-determination pursuits.

Chimezie disclosed that the Enugu convention worked out new strategies for engendering self-defence mechanisms for Biafrans and Ambazonians in the escalating security challenges faced by the people of Eastern Nigeria and Southern Cameroon.

Noting that Biafra struggle was not an Igbo affair; he stated that BNYL was a multi-national pro-Biafra group with membership drawn from all the ethnic nationalities in the former Eastern Nigeria that were parts of the defunct Republic of Biafra led by General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu between 1967 and 1970.

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“We resolved to defend ourselves by any means possible and we are not afraid to say that because we can’t continue to sit down and watch enemies massacre our people. I am afraid we may resort to guerrilla movement. We have been most prominent in the Bakassi areas where we developed partnership with Ambazonia because we found out that Biafra has a similar problem with Southern Cameroon.

“Ambazonia needs our help just as we need theirs. We have both had affinity to achieve independence in different ways and the collaboration is meant to hear one another’s cry”, Chimezie stated.

Spokesman of the Ambazonia’s representatives and President of Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Calabar, Cross River State, Enow Arrey, said he was a refugee in Nigeria because of the horrible killings of Ambazonians of southern Cameroon.

Arrey said: “I found out that my brothers in Nigeria have the same problem with Southern Cameroon people. My mission is to speak that Africa has the right to decolonize their place. We’ve decided that our people must be one as they were before colonization.

“UNIA will support the Biafra movement before we can deserve respect. We are fighting for peace in Cameroon and if that peace needs a separate state, we will do that. The peace is either for federalism or separation, just like we are in support of self-defence.”

Daily Sun gathered that collaboration between the two separatist groups was consummated at the ‘Ekukunela declaration’ in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State in 2016.