The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has accused the Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi of trying to suppress them in exchange for the vice presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress, APC, come 2023.
Reacting to the ban on all activities involving it, announced by the governor on Monday, the group told Umahi that he was wasting his time.
The Ebonyi State government had in a statement on Monday, insisted that IPOB was a proscribed organisation and therefore banned its activities in the state.
However, a statement by IPOB’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, on Tuesday, challenged the government’s capacity to suppress them.
The statement read in part, “Dave Umahi’s desperate attempt to turn our beloved Ebonyi State into another vassal state is dead on arrival.
“IPOB is on the ground and will never allow it. If his ‘Alice in Wonderland’ dream of becoming Bola Tinubu’s running mate in the 2023 presidential election is his motivation for coming out against IPOB at this critical moment in our history, then he is not only misguided but deluded.
“We note that this is not the first time Dave Umahi has sought to impress his masters by making grand declarations against IPOB.
“Sometime in mid-2017 he issued a Fatwa against our leader and boasted that IPOB’s rallies would never hold in Ebonyi State.
“How many Fulani governors have come out against herdsmen or Boko Haram? Yet Igbo governors keep on making a complete fool of themselves by attacking IPOB.”
