The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Friday resumed the call for election boycott in the Southeast ahead of the 2019 general elections.
The proscribed group insisted on a referendum and sovereign state of Biafra as part of conditions to end the renewed agitation.
It also demanded for the immediate disclosure of the whereabouts of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu and his unconditional release.
During a protest in Owerri, the Imo state capital, Friday, by hundreds of half-naked female IPOB members’ cladded in black attire, the group derided Nigeria as “a failed country that does not hold any prospect for the Igbo”.
The early morning protest grounded vehicular and human movement along major streets in Owerri, while stern looking soldiers and mobile policemen were drafted to strategic locations to forestall breakdown of law and order.
The separatist group vowed to disrupt the 2019 elections across the Southeast, warning that severe punishments will be meted out on those who will betray the renewed struggle for the actualization of the state of Biafra by conniving with “Nigerian agents to conduct election in Igbo land”.
They accused the Southeast governors and Ohaneze Ndigbo, Igbo apex socio-cultural organization of complicity in the unprovoked killing of unarmed Biafra agitators by supporting military operations in the Southeast.
Some of the various placards displayed by the protesting women, had inscriptions such as, ‘no more election in Igbo land, we want Biafra’, ‘Nigeria is a fraud, we need Biafra’, ‘no more elections, we need a referendum’, ‘release Nnamdi Kanu now or face the wrath of God’, ‘we are tired of Nigeria’, among others.
It would be recalled that leader of the group, Kanu, had called for the boycott of the Anambra governorship election in 2017 in defiance to pleas from Ohaneze Ndigbo, religious groups and other influential bodies in the Southeast.