USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria: "Secession Now", Biafran Liberation Council Calls

Subject: "Secession Now", Biafran Liberation Council Calls

"Secession Now", Biafran Liberation Council Calls

Following the recent killing of ten Igbos in Mubi, Adamawa State, an Igbo group christened Biafran Liberation Council, BLC, has renewed calls for secession saying it can no longer tolerate attacks on Igbos in Nigeria. The group in a statement made available to Pointblanknews.com urged all Igbos living in Northern Nigeria to as a matter of urgency return back to the East to avoid the "guns and bombs" of the Boko Haram.

The Biafran Liberation Council in the statement signed by its spokesman, Amaechi Nwaofia, also warned that it would no longer tolerate any further killings of men and women of Igbo origin.

The Statement reads:

"The attention of the Biafran Liberation Council, BLC, has been drawn to the callous murder of 10 Biafrans by Muslim fundamentalists in the northern town of Mubi, today. Adamawa State of Nigeria. The callous murder of innocent Biafrans was carried out few days after the warning by Boko Haram urging all Christians and Southerners in the north to leave the North immediately within 3 days."

"This call by the Boko Haram and the murder of 10 Biafrans in Mubi further confirm our long held view that we can no longer co-habit with the northerners and we should therefore be allowed to secede as the sovereign state of Biafra."

"While thanking the Boko Haram group for waking up to this reality that the north and the south can no longer co-habit under the same country and wish them well in their journey to have their own country where sharia would be their governing principle, we condemn the spilling of the blood o f innocent Biafrans."

"While warning them to refrain from harming any Biafran, we urge all Biafrans in the northern part of the troubled Nigeria to immediately begin to return home."

"We also urge every serious minded government of the Biafran states to assist in the evacuation of our people home to save them from the guns and bombs of Boko Haram."

"We are taking steps to help our people in this historical journey to an independent and free Biafra."

"All well meaning Biafrans are hereby urged to support their kith and kin in this journey.

Long live Biafran Liberation Council, Long live Biafra."

Igbo on the run from Nigeria's North ern States

Hundreds of Christians are fleeing northern Nigeria after armed gunmen from Islamist group Boko Haram carried out attacks in four states against Christian churches and shops that left at least 37 people dead

REUTERS - Hundreds of Christians have begun to flee northern Nigeria a fter dozens were killed in a series of attacks by Islamist militan ts who issued an ultimatum to Christians to leave the mainly Muslim region or be killed, witnesses said on Saturday.

A Nigerian newspaper on Tuesday published a warning from Boko Haram, a movement styled on the Taliban, that Christians had three days to get out of northern Nigeria.

Since the expiry of that ultimatum, attacks in towns in four states in northeastern Nigeria have left at least 37 people dead and hundreds of Christians are fleeing to the south, according to residents and a Red Cross official.

Gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs have targeted church congregations and a group of mourners in a church hall.

Witnesses said some shops run by Christians from the Igbo ethnic group in towns hit by the violence, including Yola and Mubi, were closed on Saturday and residents started to pack their belongings onto buses heading to southern regions.

There are fears of reprisal attacks on Muslims. Christian groups have asked their followers to remain peaceful but they concede that there is a risk of further violence.

"We are very worried by the persistent killings. We have asked youths to remain calm. We stand for a united Nigeria but there is a limit to human tolerance," a spokesman for the Christian Association of Ni geria told Reuters.

President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in the northeast and two other regions in Nigeria on Dec. 31, in a bid to contain a growing insurgency by Boko Haram, which says it wants to apply Islamic sharia law across the country.

Heavily armed troops and tanks have been patrolling parts of northeast Nigeria since Jonathan made the announcement but it is a vast, remote region that has proven difficult to secure.

Wave of assaults

Gunmen opened fire in a hall in Mubi in Adamawa state on Friday where a group of Christians had gathered to mourn the deaths of those killed in an attack the previous day. The death toll in those attacks has reached 21, the Red Cross said on Saturday.

"Unknown gunmen in Mubi attacked and killed 3 people on Thursday night and on Friday as people gathered to mourn the deaths, the gunmen believed to be the same attackers killed 18 people, totalling 21," said Red Cross spokesman Umar Mairiga.

< span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond","serif";">Adamawa state is just south of Borno state, the homeland of Boko Haram, which has been behind almost daily attacks in recent months.

Local residents in the Adamawa state capital Yola said gunmen had fired on Christians leaving church on Friday, killing eight people. The police confirmed the incident but were not able to give further comment or a death toll.

A spokesman for Boko Haram told reporters by phone that the sect was behind many of the attacks, including a shooting at a church service in northeast Gombe on Thursday, which killed at least six people.

"The Gombe attack on the Deeper Life Church and the attack on Igbos in Mubi and that of Yola were all carried out by us," Abu Qaqa said by telephone to reporters.

Elsewhere, a Christian couple were shot dead on Friday in the Mairi ward of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state and the nucleus of Boko Haram's violence since an uprising in 2009.

"A Christian husband and wife have been killed in the night (Friday) in Maiduguri," said Colonel Victor Ebhemele, operations officer in the Borno joint task force.

In Yobe state, which sits on borders with Borno state and neighbouring Niger, police said it killed some members of Boko Haram in a gun battle on Friday night.

The Red Cross official said members of the Igbo ethnic group, who are usually Christian and a minority in the mainly Muslim north were fleeing the northeast. Most of the people killed in Mubi were Igbo, local residents said.

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is forbidden", claimed responsibility for a series of bomb attacks across Nigeria on Christmas Day, including one at a church near the capital Abuja that killed at least 37 people and wounded 57.

Nigeria's population of around 160 million is split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims. Most Christians live in the south and most Muslims in the north, but many communities are mixed, and the majority live side by side in peace.

The persistent violence adds to growing problems for Jonathan, who has been criticised for not getting a grip on Boko Haram's insurgency. Nationwide strikes are planned on Monday against the government's decision to end fuel subsidies from Jan. 1, which caused the pump price to double.

Igbo Massacred in Mubi: 20 Sprayed dead< /i>

Police say gunmen from a radical Muslim sect have attacked a town hall in rural northeast Nigeria, shooting at least 20 people dead.

The attack happened around noon Friday in Mubi in Adamawa state, a town near Nigeria's border with Cameroon.

Local police commissioner Ade T. Shinaba said the attack targeted the hall when a group of Nigeria's Igbo people of the southeast were meeting.

Shinaba blamed a radical Muslim sect known as Boko Haram for the killing.

The sect, which wants to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, killed at least 510 people last year alone, according to an Associated Press count.

Residents in Mubi told the BBC those killed were from the Igbo commun ity from the south of the country.

They had been meeting to organise how to transport the body of an Igbo man shot dead by gunmen on motorbikes on Thursday evening.

Mubi is in Adamawa state which borders Borno state, where radical Islamist militants began an insurgency in 2010.

Last month, the president declared a state of emergency in Yobe and Borno states in the north-east, Plateau state in central Nigeria and Niger state in the west following a surge in ethnic and sectarian violence.

The police blame much of the violence on the Islamist Boko Haram group, which wants to impose strict Sharia law across Nigeria.

GOMBE, Nigeria (AP) _ Gunmen attacked a church in northeast Nigeria during a prayer service, spraying the congregation with gunfire and killing at least six people including the pastor's wife.

The assault late Thursday comes just weeks after a radical Muslim sect claimed respons ibility for a series of deadly bombings at churches in northern Nigeria.

Gombe state police spokesman Ahmed Muhammad confirmed Friday that six people died following the shooting s at the Deeper Life Church in Gombe, and that eight others were wounded.

The oil-rich nation's president recently put regions of the country under a state of emergency due to the threat, but that did not include Gombe.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion immediately fell on the radical Muslim sect known as Boko Haram. The se ct has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people.

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, is responsible for more than 500 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. The group claimed responsibility for an attack that killed at least 42 people in a Christmas Day bombing of a Catholic church near Abuja, as well as a suicide car bombing targeting the U.N. headquarters in the capital that killed 25 people and wounded more than 100.

Nigeria's weak central government has b een slow to respond to the sect.

On Dec. 31, President Goodluck Jonathan declared regions of Borno, Niger, Plateau and Yobe states to be under a state of emergency meaning authorities can make arrests without proof and conduct searches without warrants. He also ordered international borders near Borno and Yobe state to be closed.

However, it remains unclear what effect that will have on a sect that has adopted hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings to target the country's military and police, as well as civilians.

"Nigerian Crisis Worsens as the Igbo issue Ultimatum to All Muslims to Quit the South-East"

< span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:#E4E1DD;background:red;">Thisday newspaper with other reports

The Igbo group, Ogbunigwe Ndigbo, has handed down a two-week ultimatum to all Muslims to leave the south east or face mass killings.

In a statement by "General Devil" Nwokolo in his capacity as the Commander of the Peoples Army and tagged "Enough is Enough", said "Ogbunigwe Ndigbo, a counter-terrorist group has sworn to the protection of Ndigbo and to avenge any drop of blood of our b rothers shed anywhere in Nigeria. We will use extreme violence to protect ourselves where necessary. We have watched the killing of our people all over Northern Nigeria by Boko Haram terrorist group and we are declaring war on this group and any other group that sheds the blood of our people".

The Leader of the O'odua Peoples Congress, OPC, in the South-West, Mr. Ganiyu Adams has meantime issued a public statement asking all Yoruba indigenes in the North to return home in Yorubaland. The OPC leader, who stated this yesterday in an interview with airport correspondents at the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos, said that based on the past experiences, it was necessary for the indigenes to leave the northern states. He noted that some northern groups had made deadly threat in the past, which they eventually carried out by massacring the Yoruba indi genes living in their territory.

He expressed concern that the Federal Government has been overwhelmed by the deadly activities of the Boko Haram sect, a situation, which could not make anybody ignore Boko Haram's latest ultimatum.

Adams cited the Maitatsine riot in Kano and the Zangon-Kataf riot in Kaduna states where he said many Yoruba indigenes and southerners were massacred. He said: "My advice is that they (southerners) should come home until the situation normalises. We cannot continue to lose our people. We have lost so many people. Our people should come back home. We have lost over 100,000 southerners to various northern riots. There is need for the southerne rs to come home and not ignore the ultimatum since it is on record that anytime these people issue a threat, they often execute it."

Adam's reaction came following the threat issued by the Boko Haram sect to clamp down on all Christians living in the northern parts of the country at the expiration of a three-day ultimatum expiring tomorrow. Boko Haram, which spoke through its spokesperson, Abul Qaqa, has also threatened to confront the troops deployed in some local governments when President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in those areas last week.

"We find it pertinent to state that soldiers will only kill innocent Muslims in the local government areas where the state of emergency was declared. We would confront them squarely to protect our brothers. We also wish to call on our fellow Muslims to come back to the North because we have evidence that they would be attacked. We are also giving a three-day ultimatum to the southerners living in the northern part of Nigeria to move away," the Boko Haram spokesman had said.

Niger State Government has meanwhile queried the Emir of Suleja, Malam Awal Ibrahim, for failing to sympathise with the victims of Christmas Day blast which took place in his domain.

Ibrahim, a former governor of the state, was queried on New Year Day by the government for not showing sympathy for the vic tims of the bomb blast which claimed 42 lives.

The government action was announced by the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mr. Abdullahi Bawa Wuse, at a press briefing yesterday.

He said the state government felt the action of the monarch was unbecoming "of a person of high standing in the society".

Ibrahim was asked to explain within 24 hours why disciplinary action should not be taken against him for his behaviour.

The commissioner however said that the traditional ruler replied the query within the stipulated period and "the government is looking into it".

The emir failed to visit St. Theresa's Catholic Church in Madalla where the blast wreaked havoc, neither did he visit families of the victims.

"The government found out that despite the retinue of people that visited the victims and the bomb blast sites from across the country to show empathy with them the traditional ruler neither sent words to them nor visited the area," Wuse said.

Apart from the deaths, 80 persons were injured, 36 houses and four churches burnt and seven vehicles were destroyed.

The fundamentalist sect, Boko Haram, claimed responsibility for the bombing and later asked Christians and Southerners to leave the North ahead of its planned further attacks.

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Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
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