Arewa youths urge Osinbajo to facilitate exit of Igbo from Nigeria

The coalition of northern groups, including the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, which gave Igbo residents in the North three months to leave the region, has written to the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, to facilitate the process of allowing Igbo to leave Nigeria.
They said this was to allow the Igbo have their dream country, Biafra.
This, they said, should not be through violent means, but in a peaceful manner through a referendum.
Those who signed the letter were the leader of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Shettimaa Yerima; Joshua Viashman (Northern Youth Vanguard); Aminu Adam (Arewa Youth Development Foundation); Abdul-Azeez Suleiman (Northern Emancipation Network); and Nastura Ashir Sharif (Arewa Citizens Action for Change).
According to the groups, the Acting President should take steps to facilitate the actualisation of the Biafran nation in line with the principle of self-determination as an integral part of contemporary international law.
They added: “We feel that it is risky for the rest of the country, particularly the North, to go on pretending that it is safe for us to co-exist with the Igbo given how deeply they are entrenched in our societies.”
They said since the principle of self-determination became one of the Charters of the UN, after the World War ll, it was better for the Igbo to go without bloodletting.
The group argued that as the Igbo agitations persisted and assumed threatening dimensions, “we submit that there is the need to ensure that they are given the opportunity to exercise the right to self-determination as entrenched in the aforementioned international statutes to which Nigeria is a signatory”.
They insisted that they were not waging war or calling anyone to violence, but “we nevertheless are also not willing to continue tolerating the malicious campaign and threats of war that the Igbo have continued to wage against us”.
The youth leaders stated: “Neither can we afford to continue giving the keys to our cities to a people whose utterances, plans and arrangements are clearly geared towards war and anarchy.
“We therefore demand that the only enduring solution to this scourge that is being visited on the nation is complete separation of the states presently agitating for Biafra from the Federal Republic of Nigeria through a peaceful political process by taking steps to facilitate the actualisation of the Biafran nation in line with the principle of self-determination as an integral part of contemporary customary international law.
“We submit that this protocol envisages that people of any nation have the right to self-determination, and although the Charter did not categorically impose direct legal obligations on member states, it implies that member states allow agitating or minority groups to self-govern as much as possible.”
The coalition continued in the letter that past experience had shown that the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria manifested their hatred for Nigeria’s unity barely five years after the country’s independence from the British “when on January 15, 1966, their army officers carried out the first-ever mutiny that marked the beginning of a series of crises which has profoundly altered the course of Nigeria’s history.”
They noted that even in recent times, the agitation for the Igbo to have the Republic of Biafra heightened with the activities of Kanu’s IPOB and never opposed by majority of the Igbo.
The coalition added: “Kanu and IPOB have declared full allegiance to a ‘Republic of Biafra’ and continue to preach hatred and war virtually every day, and not for once did any Igbo leader caution them.
“Instead, many of the leaders, including Mr. Ike Ekweremadu, the Deputy Senate President, the most senior elected Igbo, pay Kanu courtesy calls to prove that he is speaking for the entire Igbo.
“Even the latest statement by the South-East Governors Forum, signed by Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State, in a response to the northern reaction, did not condemn Kanu and Uwazuruike but characterised their action as peaceful.
“While we do not see this clamour for Biafra as an issue over which a single drop of blood should be shed, we, at the same time, insist that the Igbo be allowed to have their Biafra and for them to vacate our land peacefully so that our dear country Nigeria can finally enjoy lasting peace and stability.”