Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first African-owned US-based newspaper published on the Internet
Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State of Nigeria has warned the public and security agencies that the new agitation for Biafra has gone beyond the control of the incarcerated leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
The Governor, an engineer, has faced violent insecurity in Ebonyi State, including attacks by the Fulani herdsmen and groups that claim they are IPOB and ESN.
He reached those conclusions from his assessments of the escalating situation during in his address to stakeholders and members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), at the Ecumenical Centre in State’s capital, Abakaliki, on December 15, 2022:
“Now, we have another bandit they call Simon Ekpa. Is this the Biafra we desired? To be killing ourselves and displacing others. That’s why we said in the heat of that crisis that Ebonyi State can never be part of Biafra. We are not Biafra.”
“If Biafra is to be killing ourselves, to go to the market and start shooting people, to the people that have done nothing. To be declaring sit-at-home in our home land and destroying the economy. For what reason? This things are strange to our culture”, he insisted.
“We have phones, and we call our people to call us on phone and tell us where this people are. The Police and Ebubeagu security outfit are on ground. I warn the politicians, who use these boys. They are the ones that go to court to sue Ebubeagu. They go to national television to condemn Ebubeagu.”
The equally controversial Governor added that “They have killed a lot of Ebubeagu people, who are trying to protect our people. I ask all the local government people to give us information, because we are ready to enter into the forest to flush out these bandits.”
In the summer of 2022, the Governor contested usuccessfully for the presidential nomination of Nigeria’s ruling party, the APC, to succeed incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari.
The vote tallies at the APC nomination convention in 2022, as documented by the USAfrica News Index and USAfricaonline.com show Umahi lost by an unspeakably embarrassing margin. He immediately lowered his political ambition by hijacking, the senatorial nomination process of his political party in Ebonyi.
