Gibson Achonu, Owerri

The leader of the Biafra Independent Movement and founder of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, has dismissed, as idiotic, the allegation by members of the Indigenous People of Biafra that he is one of the masked persons who had agreed to testify in the ongoing treason case against the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

Uwazuruike described Kanu and his IPOB as fraudsters who were out to deceive gullible people.

He said if he wished to give evidence against the Director of Radio Biafra, he would have done so in the open court, rather than request to be masked.

The Director of Media, IPOB, Emma Powerful, had in a recent statement issued in Owerri, alleged that the MASSOB/BIM leader, Uwazuruike, and one Mr. Chijioke Mbaneri, from Enugu State and some others had agreed with the DSS to hide under a screen to give evidence during the ongoing treason trial of Kanu before Justice Binta Nyako in Abuja.

Uwazuruike, who addressed newsmen in Owerri on Tuesday, however, dismissed the claim by IPOB, describing it as not only idiotic, stupid but also laughable.

He said he was the one who established Radio Biafra, discovered Kanu in London and appointed him as the director of the radio station, in spite of warnings by other members of MASSOB in London that Kanu was a fraudster.

Uwazuruike said, “I was the one who discovered Nnamdi Kanu in 2009, 10 years after I had started MASSOB when I travelled to London. I gave the money to establish Radio Biafra, rented a house for him and bought him a car because he was jobless and into Yahoo-Yahoo. He was not in school and had no degree.

“When I appointed him as the Director of Radio Biafra, Benjamin and others refused to work under him because they said he was a fraudster. So, he is nobody and I can’t travel to Abuja to give evidence against him and worst of all to wear a mask to do that.

“The insinuation by IPOB is not only idiotic, stupid but laughable because I am still the leader of the Biafra struggle.”

The MASSOB leader said at the end of the Civil War in 1970, there was no Igbo man that was courageous enough to talk of Biafra until he started the movement in 1999.

“When I started MASSOB in 1999, nobody gave me the chance to succeed because after the Civil War in 1970, nobody was courageous enough to speak of Biafra; the Federal Government then had made an offer of an oil block to me so as not to resuscitate the ghost of Biafra but I had rejected the offer. I was jailed and when my mother died I was released from jail and given 90 days for the burial but I used only 70 days for the burial after which I returned to jail but the government asked me to go.”

Saying that real freedom fighters were not afraid of going to jail for the cause they believed in, Uwazuruike wondered why the IPOB leader was afraid of going to jail.

“I have faced treason charges before the same Justice Binta Nyako and no true freedom fighter is afraid to go to jail for the cause they believe in; and so, why is Nnamdi afraid to face trial?

“I sacked him because he wanted MASSOB to employ violence; today where is Onwuka who wanted to use violence?,” he said.

Uwazuruike said MASSOB did not need violence to achieve the independent Biafra state as was being canvassed by the detained Director of Radio Biafra

Punchng