Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council has alleged that the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is sponsored by politicians within and outside the country, especially a northern presidential candidate.
It also claimed IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu’s popularity soared because of President Muhammadu Buhari’s poor handling of the economy, which exposed the citizenry to acute hardship.
The Igbo youth body said Kanu had seen the lapses in Buhari’s handling of the country’s affairs and decided to capitalise on it.
The development, it claimed, had given the IPOB the leeway to attack, without remorse, the country’s leadership.
According to OYC, if the President had administered the country properly and carried everybody along, irrespective of tribe, nobody would have had the effrontery to castigate his government.
The Deputy President-General of the group, Obinna Achionye, stated these in a statement on Monday
The group noted that IPOB was merely deploying different strategies to draw the attention of the international community to itself.
It claimed that the group lost its popularity before the 2019 general elections.
It said the group’s bid was to have a presidential candidate from the North-East emerge as winner of the 2019 presidential election, the opposite of which had emboldened IPOB’s anger against Igbo governors.
The statement reads in part: “Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide will expose all the commercial activities of the IPOB, as they have done more damage to Ndigbo than they appear to salvage the situation the Igbo currently find themselves since 2015.
“IPOB lost Igbo consciousness before the 2019 elections as they are doing the political bid of politicians outside Igbo land, which they started with a North-East presidential candidate.
“IPOB’s popularity before the 2019 elections waned when it destroyed its members’ Permanent Voter Cards and plotted the fall of Governors Umahi, Ugwuanyi and Ikpeazu.
“We urge the South-East governors to disregard any kangaroo committee set up to interface between them and the IPOB. There’s no reason for a backyard settlement until IPOB openly apologises to Ndigbo.
“When the South-East governors called its bluff over its antics, IPOB connived with enemies of Igbo to stage a failed revolution protest which was unsuccessful in the region.
“Now they have resorted to a violent approach to do the bidding of a presidential hopeful from outside Igboland to bring down all presidential hopefuls in Igboland ahead of 2023.
“We know how a former minister from Anambra State persuaded a northern presidential candidate to use IPOB’s nuisance to hoodwink Igbos into voting for the politician after visiting Nnamdi Kanu in Israel.
“Nevertheless, we urge South-East governors not to negotiate with Nnamdi Kanu. Their blackmail and settlement strategies are dead on arrival.”