IPOB: Igbo groups flay incarceration of women protesters

Magnus Eze, Enugu

Leading Igbo socio-cultural organisations, the Nzuko Umuna and Igbo Bu Igbo (IBI) have flayed the continued detention and humiliation of of Igbo women under the dubious guise of crackdown on the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

This came on the heels of a mass arrest of women who were demonstrating to demand the whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu, in Owerri, the Imo State capital.

The groups in separate statements, on Wednesday, described the incarceration of the women protesters by agents of the state as part of the official oppression of the Igbo as a people.

IBI Chancellor, Dr. Law Mefor and Publicity Secretary, Chijioke Ndukwe, in their statement wondered why the police descended so heavily on unarmed and harmless women who were exercising their rights to peaceful assembly, tear gassed and clamped them into detention.

with sadness and regret that we observe the continued inhuman treatment being meted out to women of Igbo extraction who were brutalized by the police before being clamped into detention, in Owerri, the Imo State capital.

“We wish to state categorically clear, without any iota of equivocation, that these women who were armless and harmless were merely exercising their rights to peaceful assembly when they were heavily descended upon by the police in a manner akin to that of a war situation as if they were common criminals”, they stated.

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They were surprised that Fulani herdsmen whose tag as terrorists has since been confirmed by the world and rated the fourth most dangerous terror group in the universe were given royal treatment by the Muhammadu Buhari administration despite their well-documented heinous crimes of frightful proportions against humanity and not arrested or clamped into detention with the alacrity our women are treated.

“The images emanating from the detention centre of the women are disturbing and unacceptable to us. It is even worse that these women, some of whom are in their sixties, are being denied food and their medicines as their family members and loved ones are denied access to them thereby leaving them starved and at the danger of death.

“We also call on our people to remain calm while we further explore ways to secure the immediate release of our dear mothers and sisters. This oppression of Ndigbo will surely not last,” IBI stated.