A coalition of Northern groups on Tuesday gave all Igbos resident in the 19 states of the North a three-month ultimatum to quit or be forced out.
The groups, including the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, led by Yerima Shettima, gave the Igbos up till October 1, 2017 to quit.
Speaking at a press conference in Kaduna on Tuesday, Yerima said: “We are also telling our brothers (northerners) out there in the South-East to get prepared to come back home.”
The text of the press conference was 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) and Joshua Viashman (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.
Suleiman noted that the action of the North was necessitated by the persistence for the actualisation of Biafra by the Igbo, adding that 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.”
(The Eagle Online)
