IPOB CONDEMNS TONY BLAIR'S VISIT TO NIGERIA

The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Monday raised the alarm over the recent visit of the former British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair to the Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir –el-Rufai, recalling that it was the same British godfathers’ military and diplomatic support to the core North that enabled Nigeria to defeat Biafra between 1967 and 1970. 

Kaduna state governor Nasir el-Rufai receiving former Prime minister of Britain Tony Blair A statement by the IPOB director of media and publicity, Comrade Emma Powerful said Blair’s visit would likely instigate another ethno-religious crisis in this part of Africa, alleging that the former prime minister’s visit was also targeted at causing violence against Christians and Biafrans in Northern Nigeria. 

The statement said: “Britain, a supposed Christian country, for reasons best known to it, has persistently worked against the interest of Biafra and majority of Christians in Nigeria. What Tony Blair is doing today is a well trodden path for the British government. 

“They have come to officially give their blessings to the impending massacre of Biafrans and other Christian minorities in the North. Simply put, Tony Blair has come to instigate another civil war in Nigeria the same way he started the one going on in Iraq today. 

“Arewa Consultative Forum, along with Northern Elders Forum, must know that 1967 is not 2017 because Britain will not defend them when the chips are down.” IPOB said the ‘raw hatred and persecution of Biafrans’ by the British through the North, was simply because of the people’s enterprise and strong belief in the Judeo-Christian faith, expressing happiness that leaders of the Middle Belt were beginning to realize the existential threat to the survival of Christianity and Christians in Nigeria. 

According to IPOB, “the struggle for Biafra independence, which it is proudly agitating for, is often misunderstood by the very few vocal social commentators and Nigerian leaders,” insisting that Biafra freedom was not just a living agitation, but a fight for the survival of oppressed people in Nigeria against the entrenched threats of radical Islamic fundamentalism and their political collaborators in Nigeria and Britain.