Southeast Governors Forum, Tuesday, directed security agencies in the zone to do everything possible to fish out the location and to authenticate the reality of the video circulating online, where alleged members of the Eastern Security Network, (ESN) and Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) were beheading two policemen.
The chairman of the forum, Gov. David Nweze Umahi, disclosed this in Abakaliki, during a security summit organized by the state’s Founding Fathers, and the Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN).
Umahi also urged others from the zone to rise up and condemn the act.
The federal government had accused the Eastern Security Network (ESN), an outfit of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), of “beheading the two police officers”.
Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, said this in a statement on Monday, adding that the attack occurred on Saturday.
Umahi stated: “You are all witnesses to what has been trending few days back on social media. I think it is in front page of Thisday now, it is causing tension in the North now. Where people said to be IPOB an ESN by the uniform I saw are cutting the neck of two police officers and were videoing it and were saying those are from a particular tribe not southeast.
“There was a similar incident where they took what was happening in Senegal and cloned it. Gave it a voice and said it was happening in Ebonyi local government area of Ebonyi state and tension rose in the North. It took the ingenuity of El-Rufai to send that particular video to America and they decoded it and found out that was in Senegal.
“The governors of southeast have met condemned what they saw on social media and we directed our security agencies to do everything possible to fish out the location and to authenticate the reality of what you are seeing because it is a bad sight to behold. And we have requested all our people all over the world to condemn it. Igbo man is not known for violence. Igbo man is a nation builder.
“We governors noted that agitation does not go with hate speeches, with threatening leaders both from your region and other regions.
“How will this thing go to make up agitation. We have over 11 million Igbo living in the North, we have many in the south west, many in the south south.
The southeast in particular they started with the issue of agitations, the agitations did not start with our regime. Under Dr Sam Egwu it started with MASSOB, and the tension was growing right from the time of Chief Elechi but never in this proportion and when the IPOB became violence our people did not rise up to speak and condemn it, and nobody can blame them, only the governor’s did because the governor’s have security beefed up around them.
Many did not speak out of fear and you can not blame them, those who were speaking in support of the agitations were on political gains and some of our religious leaders definitely not all were speaking in favour to populate their denomination. Some where speaking out of malice, some were speaking without understanding, some were speaking out of fear.
“And the keynote of the agitations was marginalization.
“When we conveyed the meeting of southeast, we asked the Ohaneze to set up a committee to look at the issue of agitations, the report is before me and some of you have seen it.
Unfortunately, not because there were no elements of marginalization against south east, but they could not able to deal with the matter, but the committee was making recommendation federal government should dualize all the roads, the Niger Bridge and so on. So you ask yourself which other region has all these facilities.