As preparations are on top gear to celebrate the 17th anniversary ceremony of the formation of the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, on September 13, this year, leader of the Biafra Independence Movement, BIM, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, yesterday, attributed the successes so far recorded by the movement to God.
He recalled that when MASSOB was started in 1999, as Africa’s leading non-violent group, nobody gave it any chances of survival as people felt that the clamour for the resuscitation of new Biafra would fizzle out the next day without standing the test of time.
In a press statement issued to newsmen yesterday and signed on his behalf by the movement’s Director of Information, Mazi Chris Mocha, Uwazuruike lamented the killing of MASSOB members by Nigerian security agencies immediately after the declaration of Biafra by Chief Ralph Uwazuruike himself in Aba, Abia State on May 23, 2000.
According to Uwazuruike, “from May 23, 2000 to May 22, 2013, the group lost about 3,006 of its members to the murderous security agencies, even as unrecorded causality figures may be close to this number, yet the struggle has refused to die, rather it continued to wax stronger.
“They also destroyed my cars in Lagos and confiscated my three SUV jeeps, BMW motorcycle out-rider machine and a Yamaha generator, all in a bid for the former Imo state Governor, Chief Achike Udenwa to win the heart of his Abuja political masters for a second term”, Uwazuruike lamented.
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He further recalled that the group’s national headquaters at Okigwe, Imo state, was razed down on December 21, 2001, yet the struggle has refused to die, adding that several attempts were made on his life in order to abandon the struggle.
But rather than allowing the struggle to die, it has increased and continued to wax from strength to strength each new day.
The BIM leader disclosed that because of his refusal to pay the sum of N5 million police protection fee to the former Imo state Director of State Security Services, SSS, Alex Amechina (now retd), he was advised to leave the country and go on exile.
“When I refused to go on exile, there were regular invasions of my residence and MASSOB secretariat by security agencies, yet the struggle refused to die”, he further stated.
Uwazuruike who decried the unprofessional conduct of Nigeria security agencies in managing separatist agitations said the blood of the dead activists who died in active service have promoted the Biafra struggle because according to him, so many things promote a genuine agitations.
Mocha who represented Uwazuruike at the special meeting in Igbere, Bende Local Government Area of Abia state, at the weekend, recalled that the late Dr. Nelson Mandela’s mother died while her son, Mandela was in prison just as Uwazuruike’s mother Ezinne Monica, also died while her son, Ralph Lebeanya was in Keffi prison in Nassarawa state.
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