Igbo groups deny five Fulanis were killed in Aba forest saying it is a ploy to attack them

SEVERAL Igbo organisations including the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) have denied claims by the Department of State Services (DSS) that five northerners were killed and buried in a forest in Abia State saying it was a ruse to launch an attack on them.

 

Last week, DSS officials said that five Fulani herdsmen Mohammed Gainako, Ibrahim Mohammed, Idris Yakubu, and Isa Mohammed Rago were killed and buried in shallow graves in Umuanyi Forest near Aba in Abia State. According to the DSS, the five men were among 55 people who had been secretly killed extra-judiciously and buried in the forest.

 

However, in a swift rebuttal, Ipob, the Igbo Youths Movement (IYM) and the Igbo Women Association (Iwa) have denied the allegations. They added that the claims were part of a ploy by the federal government to engineer another round of mass killing of Igbo in the north.

 

Ipob spokesman Emma Powerful, said: "It was not in the character of Ipob as a non-violent organisation to kill innocent people. The federal government, with a predetermined agenda to cloak Ipob in the garment of violent organisation deliberately designed such propaganda in order to ignite ethnic cleansing.”

 

He added that Ipob has uncovered another plan by the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led federal government to assassinate its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, in Kuje Prison through the help of Boko Haram detainees.  According to Mr Powerful, said the federal government, the DSS and Kuje Prison officials held a meeting where they agreed that they will use Boko Haram detainees to eliminate Mr Kanu.

 

Mr Powerful added: “In the meeting, they agreed to use some acclaimed Boko Haram leaders who were arrested and kept in an unknown prison but will be brought to Kuje prison after being taken to court, where they will be remanded in the same prison with Mr Kanu and be given weapons to attack him and claim he insulted them which led to physical combat that claimed his life. Another game plan, according to our intelligence arm, revealed that the Boko Haram fighters will break into where Mr Kanu is presently being detained in Kuje prison to assassinate him by strangling him to death and afterwards escape from the prison and then the government will claim that Boko Haram attacked the prison to free their members who were detained in the masterminded jail break.”

 

Iwa leader, Chief (Mrs) Mariah Okwor added: “Iwa condemns in no uncertain terms the clearly false allegation by the DSS that Ipob killed five northerners and buried them in a forest in Aba. This calculated blackmail is probably plotted to give Ipob a bad name as it has never been and cannot transform into a violent organisation.

 

“Ipob is a mass movement of millions of eastern youths, who are frustrated and disenchanted with Nigeria as presently structured. Those who came up with this spurious accusation, had better look for a better story to tell."

 

IYM founder and secretary of Igbo Leaders of Thought, Evangelist Elliot Uko, added that it would have ignored the DSS allegations but for the grave implication it portends. He challenged the DSS to make public the names of the Ipob members who killed the five northerners, the circumstances of their death, venue, date and event that led to their killing.