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The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) on Friday denied involvement in the recent murder of an Islamic cleric in Ebonyi State.
The Eastern Updates reports that the cleric, who is from Ebonyi State, Sheikh Ibrahim Iyiorji, was recently murdered in the state by gunmen suspected to be IPOB members but the group said killing of Muslims was not part of its mandate.
A statement by the spokesman of the group, Mr. Emma Powerful, claimed that killing a Muslim would add nothing to its quest for the Biafra Republic.
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‘IPOB does not engage in such barbaric killings and cannot be part of such heinous crimes against humanity. IPOB does not kill flies not to talk of human beings and an Igbo man for that matter, irrespective of his religious belief.
‘Important questions to ask are: why will IPOB kill this Igbo Islamic cleric? Was he a threat to the Biafra movement? How many of our known enemies have we killed?’
The group stated that Nigerian security agencies were fond of stage-managing confessions from criminals with the hope of indicting them.
IPOB noted that criminals tagged as unknown gunmen were not part of IPOB, stating that their activities were in the open and cannot be described as unknown.
“Some unscrupulous elements and petty thieves are constantly stage-managed by security agents to lie against IPOB members and ESN operatives.
“IPOB and ESN never killed any army officer, police officer or DSS agent despite all provocations in the name of unknown gunmen since we started pursuing Biafra freedom,” the spokesman added.
Meanwhile, IPOB has raised a fresh alarm over the alleged plan of the Federal Government to smuggle in the National Grazing Bill at the National Assembly warning southerners and people of the middle-belt to reject it.
According to the group, this was another plot of the government to freely allocate pieces of land to Fulani herders in the South and Middle-Belt of Nigeria.
It went further to call on the federal lawmakers from the southern and Middle-Belt to reject the proposed bill.
