The Indigenous People of Biafra has denied any involvement in the killing of a pregnant woman and her four children in Anambra State.
The group said it strongly condemned the ‘abominable” act, saying that “in Igboland, it is an abomination to kill a pregnant woman. The perpetrators of the heinous crime are certainly not IPOB and could never have been”.
The pregnant woman from Adamawa State, Harira Jubril, with her four kids, was killed when unknown gunmen opened fire on the Isulo community in Orumba North Local Government Area last Sunday.
The gunmen visited two other communities on the same day and killed about five other persons.
The Orumba North LGA is among the communities that the State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, has imposed a 6pm to 6am curfew on during a live broadcast on Wednesday.
Soludo described the killings as “barbaric” and “unacceptable” and vowed to fish out the perpetrators and deal with them in accordance with the law.
But the IPOB through its Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, in a statement on Friday, said, “We have always said it that the terrorists were imported into Biafra land to commit the ongoing atrocities all in an attempt to discredit our struggle, demonise IPOB and proscribe it, then lobby and bribe Britain to tag us a terror group with the hope to stop our match to freedom.”
Powerful said those involved in the “barbarity” of killing the Hausa woman and children should wait for the repercussions of the evil they committed against the innocent woman and her children.
He insisted that the criminal elements behind the killing were not IPOB and that they should be prepared to pay for their heinous crime.
He accused the military of harbouring Fulani terrorists in their barracks and giving them ID cards for identification, adding that the terrorists were transferred into the southeast territory.
The statement read in part, “IPOB has severally said that these criminal elements are not part of us and they should allow Hausa do their legitimate business in our land because Hausa too suffer the same fate we are facing in the hands of Fulani terrorists claiming they are herdsmen in Nigeria.