Security agencies on red alert over northern groups ultimatum to Ndigbo

The Federal Government on Wednesday said security agencies were already on the alert over the position of a coalition of Northern groups, including the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, which on Tuesday gave all Igbos resident in the 19 states of the North a three-month ultimatum to quit or be forced out after the expiration of the October 1, 2017, deadline.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said this while answering questions from State House correspondents after the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Mohammed assured Nigerians that security agencies are on top of the matter, adding that the statement was capable of destabilising the country.

ALHAJI LAI MOHAMMED

He observed that such development did not start now.

He said, “The issue of one or two groups issuing statements that are capable of destabilising the polity and then being responded to by another group, I think did not just start today or did not start yesterday.

“What I want to assure you is that security organisations are very very much on top of this matter.”

When asked whether the issue of the ultimatum came up for discussion during the FEC meeting, the minister said it did not come up.

The National President, AYCF, Yerima Shettima, had handed down the ultimatum at a press conference in Kaduna on Tuesday.

“We are also telling our brothers (northerners) out there in the South-East to get prepared to come back home,” Shettima had said.

The ultimatum followed a successful sit-at-home order enforced by the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous People of Biafra on May 30, 2017, which the five South-East states complied with.

The ultimatum was handed down at a well-attended press conference held at the Arewa House, Kaduna, on Tuesday.

The text of the press conference signed by Nastura Ashir Sharif (Arewa Citizens Action for Change); Alhaji Shettima Yerima (Arewa Youth Consultative Forum); Aminu Adam (Arewa Youth Development Foundation); Alfred Solomon, (Arewa Students Forum); Abdul-Azeez Suleiman (Northern Emancipation Network), as well as Joshua Viashman, who signed on behalf of the Northern Youth Vanguard.

The National President of the Northern Emancipation Network, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, who read the text of the press conference, noted that the Igbo had become a threat to national unity.

He noted that the action of the North was necessitated by the persistence for the actualisation of Biafra by the Igbo, saying this had led to the impediment of other people’s rights in the South-East by ‘the Indigenous People of Biafra and its overt and covert sponsors’.

Suleiman said, “With the effective date of this declaration, which is today, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, all Igbo currently residing in any part of northern Nigeria are, hereby, served notice to relocate within three months and all northerners residing in the South-East are advised likewise.

“All northern civil societies and pressure groups are, by this declaration, mandated to mobilise for sustained, coordinated campaigns at their respective state Government Houses, state Houses of Assembly, local government council secretariats and traditional palaces.

“Our first major move shall be to reclaim, assume and assert sole ownership and control of these landed resources currently owned, rented or in any way enjoyed by the …Igbo in any part of Northern Nigeria.”

PUNCH NEWSPAPER