Thursday, February 10, 2011

Thhere was pandemonium in Onitsha, the commercial city of Anambra State yesterday during a clash between members of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB and the Police.
Daily Sun gathered that the clash between MASSOB members and some armed policemen in some parts of Onitsha placed the city under siege. Commercial activities and vehicular movements were interrupted as residents scampered for safety.

Addressing journalists after the incident, the Onitsha Regional Administrator of MASSOB, Chief Arinze Igbom said members of the group were returning from the Federal High Court, Awka where they had gone to secure bail for some of their members when the policemen swooped on them.

According to Igbom, men of the Nigeria Police forced their vehicle to pull to a halt, shot at the vehicle, following which five of them sustained gunshot wounds. “They were coming from Awka where they had gone for the bail application filed by our counsel, Mr. Destiny Nnagbo for the release of the remaining eight members in the prison when policemen started shooting at them and wounded the driver, Chukwudi Osogeme and fell unconscious. They later took him away in their bus.”

Arinze also narrated that men of Nigerian Police were acting on the directive of the state government to force all the members to purchase the taskforce emblem of N4000 as a means of getting at the members whom he said mainly were commercial motorcycle operators. He called on the International community to come to their aid, noting that they had been pushed to the wall by the government and maintained that the leadership of MASSOB did not believe in violence.

“What the state government under Mr. Peter Obi and the Commissioner of Police in Anambra State were doing was to force us into violence so that what is happening in Borno and Plateau Sºtates would be happening in the state but still, MASSOB is a non violent group who are only saddled with the passion of the struggle for emancipation of the Igbo race”

“We are calling on the United Nation and United Human Rights Activists to save us from the hand of Nigerian government because what they have started doing of recent, using the security agents were all being geared towards eliminating MASSOB from the map of the world” He said. Meanwhile, all efforts made by Daily Sun to speak with the Area Commander of Onitsha Area Command, ACP John Nwele failed as all the calls put through his mobile phone were not answered.