By Kingston Obung
Calabar
A socio-political group, South-south Patriots (SSP) has insisted that the people of the region would not associate with Biafra’s agitation for self determination.
Rising from its one-day executive meeting in Calabar yesterday, the group said the territory of South-south is not part of Igbo’s agitation for self-determination under a yet-to-be realised country called Biafra.
In a 12-point communiqué signed by the leader of the group, Prince Kingsley Ndedu, the Secretary, Mr. Joseph Udoh, Chief Mobilisation Officer, Mr. Aigberemhon Moses, and three others, the group accused the Igbo of seeking to dominate other minority groups in the former Eastern region.
“It is on record that in the year 1966, the Igbo derailed the first democratically elected government through a coup led by Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu in an attempt to suppress Nigeria and Nigerians. The Igbo’s domineering tendencies they attempted on Nigeria in 1966 which could not be achieved is now tilted towards the South-south geopolitical zone. This is totally not acceptable,” the communiqué read in part.
The group further noted that “self-determination can actually be achieved in two ways mainly; peaceful means through referendum, and through war, which is the most painful with attendant loss of lives. Eritrea achieved theirs through war. In the case of South Sudan they had theirs peacefully but the country has seen no peace after the peaceful separation from the North, as the country is now in civil war.”
“The Igbo marginalised the South-south by deliberately not building a single government-owned school in the entire South-south region during their reign in the defunct Eastern region…For selfish benefits, they only developed palm fruit/rubber plantation and others in South-south and employed our people as labourers and then paid them peanuts. The only roads then led to their plantations (hence) we are not part of and cannot be part of Biafra. We sincerely demand for restructuring of Nigeria (and) true federalism to be implemented.”
