NGOZI OKORIE
GOVERNOR Nyesom Wike of Rivers State disclosed, on Tuesday, that two kingpins of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, involved in the murder of six soldiers and four policemen in Oyigbo, had been arrested by security operatives.
The suspects were arrested Monday evening, according to him.
He noted that some IPOB members had taken Rivers hospitality for granted by unleashing mayhem in Oyigbo, adding that they also attempted to cause inter-ethnic war.
Wike spoke when the Governor of Rotary District 9141, Virginia Major, led a delegation of Rotarians to visit him at the Government House, Port Harcourt, according to a statement signed by his Special Assistant on Media, Kelvin Ebiri.
He stressed that steps taken by his government, including the imposition of curfew on Oyigbo Local Government Area, had helped to prevent the situation from degenerating into a war between Igbo and Hausa communities in the area.
He said criminals, under the guise of IPOB had killed 10 security agents in Oyigbo.
“If we did not take the steps we took by imposing curfew in Oyigbo, today, it would have been the Hausa and Igbo that would have been fighting and nobody knows what level it would have taken today,” the governor noted.
“I will not support criminality. I won’t because the soldiers don’t like me, then you go and kill them. And then, I will come out and clap, saying thank you for killing the soldiers. Thank you for killing the police,” he said.
He urged against the peddling of the falsehood that Igbo people were being killed in Oyigbo, saying that if IPOB members had not killed people and destroyed properties, government would not have had any justification to declare curfew on the council.
