“Nationwide general strike observed as a sit-at-home across Biafraland on September 14, 2018, is the only way we Biafrans can honour our fallen brethren”
• Sets aside Sept 14 to mark invasion of leader’s Umuahia home
Okey Sampson, Aba
Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has declared September 14, 2018 as sit-at-home in all Biafra land in protest of the invasion of the home of the leader of the pro Biafra group at Afara Ukwu, Umuahia, Abia State by the military.
In a statement by Media and Publicity Secretary of IPOB, Emma Powerful, the protest will “be a way to register our anger regarding the men and women killed at Afaraukwu in Umuahia, during Operation Python Dance II on September 14 last year.”
Powerful said the protest will also be for “those killed in Ngwa, Aba, Igweocha (Port Harcourt) and buried in unmarked mass graves as a result of unprovoked military invasion of Biafraland by the Nigerian Army.
“We shall also remember all those killed in the struggle for the restoration of Biafra independence since August 2015, when the army shot dead one Okafor in Onitsha on a peaceful march from Nkpor to Onitsha main town. Their sacrifice will neither be forgotten nor will it be in vain, because come what may, this generation of IPOB must and will restore Biafra.
“The sacrilegious and disgraceful humiliation of Igbo women, some of them great grand-mothers, ranks as one of the most abominable act of desecration ever visited upon the land of Biafra in recorded history. It will mark the defining event that completed the shame and humiliation of the Igbo race.
“Nationwide general strike observed as a sit-at-home across Biafraland on September 14, 2018, is the only way we Biafrans can honour our fallen brethren and legitimately remind our northern oppressors and their collaborators in our midst that enough is enough.
“We do not want another Operation Python Dance or another mass murder of Biafra agitators and humiliation of our mothers in our land. Biafraland, we state categorically, must emerge a free nation under God, whether our enemies like it or not.
“What happened at Afaraukwu; the desecration of the house of a traditional ruler, the slaughter of innocent men and women: the wholesale massacre along the Ngwa segment of Enugu-Igweocha (Port Harcourt) Expressway, countless number of mass graves across Biafraland, are repulsive, inhumane, barbaric and worthy of total condemnation by all right thinking people,” the statement stated.