THISDAYonline

Following on the heels of threat by Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu that Igbo people could secede from Nigeria again, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has threatened not to allow federal elections in Igboland come 2003.

In an exclusive interview with THISDAY, Friday, following a massive reception by his teeming members and supporters in the Northern City of Kaduna, MASSOB leader, Chief Ralph Uwazurike vowed that the 2003 presidential and federal parliamentary elections would not hold in the South-East and South-South zones.

According to him, "MASSOB will allow the elections into the Houses of Assembly, the governorship and the local governments only. For the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Presidency, there will be no elections in the Biafran territory."

The MASSOB leader's controversial position comes just days after the ex-Biafran leader, Ojukwu, threatened that the Igbo people may re-consider their position in Nigeria if the outcome of the much canvassed National Conference is unfavourable to them. Ojukwu spoke early in the week at a press conference organised by former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr. Chu S. P. Okongwu.

Although Uwazurike acknowledged that a number of his supporters were currently being detained by security agencies in parts of the country, he said that, "I am not a wanted person, otherwise I would not be here. Why should I be a wanted person, am I Bin Laden? I am not a Nigerian. I don't travel on Nigerian passport. I am a Biafran, along with over seven million others across the world," he said.

Uwazurike, however, vowed to his supporters in Kaduna that not only is there no going back on MASSOB plans, the organisation would prosecute Governor Achike Udenwa of Imo state whenever the group realises its project.

He said Udenwa constituted "a stumbling block" to the aspirations of MASSOB especially in establishing a sovereign state of Biafra, for eastern Nigeria.

The MASSOB leader later told THISDAY in an exclusive interview that he had delineated the area including Delta State, into 24 regions with provincial administrators already appointed.

Uwazurike explained that he was in Kaduna to formally commission MASSOB in the north and "to talk about Biafra and to tell my people about the project we are into."

The highpoint of the meeting was the swearing-in of a MASSOB activist, Mr Leonard Ukatu, as the "Biafran Ambassador to Northern Nigeria."

He also assured his supporters that there would not be any form of marginalisation in Biafraland noting that, "the first Biafran President will not come from the Igbo speaking areas."

Uwazurike who commissioned the Biafra House in the United States of America (USA) recently, said that the German Government had requested him to also set up a 'Biafran embassy' in that country.

According to him, MASSOB had equally acquired a property in London for another 'embassy' in Great Britain.

When THISDAY visited his hotel room on yesterday morning, Uwazurike said that, "the provincial administrators will take control of the Biafran regions. The Biafran police already assist in crime control in some parts of the area.

"Biafra is already actualised; today we have Voice of Biafra International which broadcasts weekly for now, we have commissioned the Biafra House in the USA, so, the world has come to know that Biafra exists.

"With time, the sovereignty, that is, the power of the state, will be established. That is the only thing left. "We have the Biafran police, we have the Biafran intelligence service, we have the Biafran court, all of them are operational.

"We have not yet established the Armed Forces and that will come when we have full sovereignty. Our concept is non-violence and that is why we cannot give a definite date for that sovereignty."

It would be recalled that at a conference in Enugu last Monday, Ojukwu had said: "I have no fear that if what Nigeria comes out with from the National Conference is not exactly what we Ndigbo want, we may talk about secession. We do not want to break up Nigeria but if you treat us as a goat, we will behave like a goat, even like a he-goat."

But in a veiled reference to Ojukwu on Wednesday while speaking in the Presidential Villa, Abuja after being decorated with the 2002 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Appeal Fund Launch emblem, Obasanjo said: "Any Nigerian who is clamouring for another war in the country after 30 months of civil war needs to have his head examined." He described secession as "madness to the extreme and the import should not be lost to the armed forces, this government, the people of this country and those who lost on both sides of the war".

Obasanjo said further that "rascality must have limit and we will put a limit to irresponsible rascality. I wonder why in the beginning of the 21st century, 31 years after the civil war, people are still talking of secession. Anybody talking about that should have his head examined".

The President also distanced himself from the contention that recent agitations for secession was a fall out of the "No Victor-No Vanquished" way in which the civil war was concluded.

"I don't agree with that, we ended the war well because we fought for the unity of the country, not to divide the nation", he added.

Giving historical perspective to the war, Obasanjo described it as "the most wasteful war in this country and most of those who participated on both sides would agree we had one war too many".

The President who fought the war was a Colonel Commanding the 3rd Marine commander which secured the surrender of the Biafran Forces in the 1967-1970 civil war insisted that "war is not the last means of settling human disputes because it leads to destructive waste".

"I was in the thick of it all and we still had to do what should have been done in the beginning, that is, to talk", he maintained.