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‘No body can intimidate me’
ben duru
Correspondent, Owerri
Leader and founder of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Uwazuruike has declared that no amount of intimidation or threat of arrest would deter him from pursuing his cause to emancipate Igbo-speaking people.
According to him, the arrest and possible prosecution of the leader of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force(NDVF), Alhaji Asari Dokubo was not enough to discourage him from pursuing the cause of the actualisation of a true nation for the Igbo people.
He also said that he was aware that the former Director of the State Security Services (SSS) in Imo State, had declared him wanted but that the action in itself was laughable, considering the fact that he had not committed any offence.
Uwazuruike, who spoke exclusively to Saturday Independent expressed the view that current happenings in the country had exposed the insincerity of the federal government to better the lot of the people.
He noted that what the people of Nigeria needed was basic social amenities and not threats of arrest and prosecution of innocent people. Uwazuruike called on the authorities to stop chasing shadows and embark on good governance to bring about good things of life.
The MASSOB leader expressed happiness that the international community had taken judicial notice of the activities of the present leadership in the country, an indication that the leaders would be put under check.
To him “the leaders are confused and they are showing it on a daily basis. The several raids on my home is one of those things that reveal a government’s insincerity in dealing with practical issues that they ought to treat once and for all. This shows that they are confused.”
According to Uwazuruike, charges of treasonable felony against Dokubo would never hold water because the activist had never threatened the country but was only asking for the rights of the people of the Niger Delta region.
He berated the present government for its dictatorial tendencies, saying that a situation where government officials take the laws into their hands and raid private homes, injuring people in the process smacks of irresponsibility.
The MASSOB founder vowed not to abandon his country home but that the organisation would continue to pursue the stages set for the emancipation of the people of former Eastern region.
This, he said, is a wish that “I have asked God to guide me and to abandon the journey would mean I have abandoned my future and that of my children and mortgaged their growth and progress”.
“I am doing what I am doing not for any selfish reason but to ensure that my children and the Igbo generation yet unborn is not displaced again or made to be second class citizens in a country that their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters have shed their blood to build,” he declared.
Uwazuruike was recently declared wanted by security agents for alleged acts capable of breaking up Nigeria. He has since been in hiding until this latest interview.
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