They said those being arrested and killed by the security agencies were not IPOB members nor ESN operatives.
The group was reacting to the raiding and flushing out of some criminal elements’ hideouts in Ukpor, Nnewi South Local Government Area of Anambra State, by the security agencies recently.
In a statement on Monday, the IPOB’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, advised the security agencies to apply professionalism in their duties as arresting and killing innocent citizens of the area would not help them the situation.
Powerful said, “Those arrested and killed are not IPOB members because IPOB members are professionally trained securities, not like criminals terrorising the peaceful communities in Anambra State and some parts of Orlu in Imo State.
“We are equally warning Nigerian soldiers deployed in Ukpor Nnewi South LGA to stop going house to house searching innocent people and tagging them ESN, that one we cannot afford to accept. Face the criminals and their collaborators and stop going house to house searching and linking them to IPOB members.
“The desperation to demonise IPOB and ESN members as criminal elements cannot work because the public understands how IPOB operates since we started operations. Arresting innocent people and parading them as ESN operatives or IPOB cannot make us to succumb to your blackmail.”
The group pointed out that it had started fishing out the criminal elements sponsored by politicians to terrorise Biafraland with the aim of blackmailing IPOB.
It said IPOB chased away cultists in Abia State two months ago and would continue doing it until criminal elements were chased out of the region.
The statement read in part, “The Nigeria army should know whom they are killing in their operations because IPOB are not involved in criminalities or atrocities in our homeland, what we are after is restoration of Biafra, we have come a long way to be distracted with their blackmail and media propaganda.
“In similar vein, we found out that some unscrupulous elements and criminals are using the hallowed name of IPOB and ESN operatives in carrying out their nefarious activities in the region with the sole aim of dragging our name in the mud.
“We hereby warn criminal elements to desist from using the name IPOB and ESN for their criminal activities. IPOB solely believes in one thing, the Biafra freedom and we won’t allow criminalities around us.
“Criminals can never take over our ancestral lands because we are fully on ground, we realise that some hoodlums are working with the government and her compromised security agencies to point our people for no just cause, we will shock them and their families, if you don’t stop this.”
