"Nnamdi Kanu is working for his own selfish interest" – Uwazuruike

Founder of the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, and Biafra Independent Movement, Ralph Uwazuruike, on Monday said that the leader of Independent People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, does not actually work for Biafra’s independence, but for his own “selfish interest.”

Uwazuruike advised Ndigbo to disregard Kanu’s Sunday broadcast in which he declared “no election/referendum;” adding that Kanu did not have the powers or the right to stop the Igbo people from participating in the 2019 general elections.

“Last time, he carried a campaign that there wouldn’t be election in Anambra State and what eventually happened in the end?

“Today, he has started again. He is back again after several months, because election is just by the corner, so as to deceive the people and mop up money for himself as the IPOB leader and in the name of fighting for the realisation of Biafra independence,” he said in a report by Punch.

Uwazuruike, who spoke in Owerri, Imo State, contended that he was the Number One person and the protagonist in the agitation and struggle for the realisation of Biafra Republic.

He further said that Kanu was only deceiving the people, adding that the dummy of no election, sit-at-home order, referendum and no census that Kanu was selling today was originally introduced by him for the realisation of the struggle.

“In 2004, we in MASSOB came up with dummy of no election, sit-at-home order, referendum and no census, which Kanu is selling today in the Southeast as strategies towards gaining Biafra independence.

“However, when I was later called by late Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu and other higher authorities that the strategies would have adverse effect on Ndigbo, we decided to drop them. Today, Kanu is using the same dummy to cause confusion in the Biafran areas, not considering their adverse effects.

“For instance, the issue of no election is a constitutional matter. Kanu does not have the powers to say that election can never take place in the Southeast. The truth is that in the Southeast, we have only five states and what a presidential candidate, for example, only needs to win his or her election is two-thirds majority vote.

“If the five states out of the 36 states, including the FCT, do not vote and 31 states vote, two-thirds majority would still be gotten. The president then has the powers to appoint anybody to be in charge of the other five states who do not vote. This is, therefore, politically detrimental to Ndigbo,” he said.

On referendum, Uwazuruike noted that it was not in the Nigerian constitution, adding that for it to be enshrined in the constitution, it must get the approval of the National Assembly and the Presidency.

“These are things some Igbo people do not know. Kanu has started his campaign to cause more confusion for our people, which I call campaign of calumny and deceit.

“The emergence of Kanu in 2009, 10 years after I had started the struggle, was stage-managed by the government to put confusion among the leaders and the people, strictly aimed at non-realisation of the republic.

“What Kanu suffered recently in the hands of soldiers is just one-twentieth of what I have suffered in the course of this struggle.

“A freedom fighter is always known for donating his life to the cause of the struggle. That he ran away after a while and reappeared during the electioneering period is deceitful.

“He is being used to destabilise Ndigbo towards gaining the independence of Biafra.” 

Uwazuruike, nevertheless, expresses worries about the lives of innocent people recently killed in the last “Operation Python Dance” and in what he called “the deceitful way of agitating for Biafra sovereignty.”