Politics

Nigeria: Proscribed separatist group, IPOB takes stand against sit-at-home protest

Published

9 months ago

August 13, 2023

In Nigeria, members of the proscribed Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) Saturday warned against the continued sit-at-home protest in the Eastern part of the country.

According to reports, IPOB also distributed notices to the public on the cancellation of the exercise which usually takes place on Monday.

In a statement titled “Monday weekly sit-at-home: An unpleasant phase of a bygone history that must never be replicated as echoed by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu,” IPOB’s spokesman, Mr. Emma Powerful, reiterated IPOB’s position to discontinue the practice.

The group said: “Any person or persons talking about a non-existent sit-at-home in the southeast is an enemy of the people and shall be dealt with accordingly.

“The exercise also aims to inform the people that sit-at-home is not only “dead” but will also never again be invoked or deployed as a tool of civil disobedience in the group’s quest for self-determination,” he added.

The self-acclaimed leader of the controversial separatist group, Nnamdi Kanu, who is currently in the custody of Nigeria’s secret police, had last month written a letter to Finland-based agitator, Simon Ekpa, ordering him to end the sit-at-home in the South-East region of the country

The sit-at-home protest every Monday has not only disrupted commercial activities but has led to violence, killings and destruction of properties in the five states that make up the geopolitical zone.

The statement reads in part: “It is to be stated for the umpteenth time, for those who may feign ignorance of the laws governing the conduct expected of IPOB family worldwide, that our supreme leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has ordered the permanent end to Monday sit-at-home in the south-east.

“Those purporting to be running a Biafra Government in Exile, from somewhere in Finland, also known as Autopilot are not IPOB members and their activities do not represent the views of Kanu, rank and file IPOB membership nor ESN operatives”.

Nigeria has had a number of separatist groups spring up since her political independence in 1960. The cry for self-determination amongst various ethnic groups represents the recent wave intensified since 2015 when President Muhamadu Buhari came into power.

Politics

Burkina Faso investigating reports of northern killings

Published

21 hours ago

April 28, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

A government spokesman has revealed that Burkina Faso is looking into reports that 223 people were killed by the Burkinabe army in two villages in the north in February.

The killing was first reported by the Human Rights Watch (HRW), causing a rift between the junta-led West African state and some foreign media that published the report. The HRW report released on Thursday said that the military had executed residents of Nodin and Soro, including at least 56 children, as part of a campaign against civilians suspected of working with jihadist terrorists. The report was based on interviews with witnesses, members of civil society, and other groups.

Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, a spokesman for the government, said that HRW’s claims were “peremptory” and that the junta was not unwilling to look into the claimed crimes.

“An investigation has been launched into the killings in Nodin and Soro,” Ouedraogo said in a late-evening statement, quoting a statement from a regional prosecutor on March 1.

Since Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s militaries took over in a series of coups from 2020 to 2023, violence in the area has gotten worse. This is because of the ten-year fight with Islamist groups related to Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Attacks on Burkina Faso got much worse in 2023, with more than 8,000 people killed, according to the U.S.-based crisis-monitoring group ACLED.

Politics

S’Africa lengthens troop deployment in Mozambique, Congo DR

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a speech that South Africa’s military would keep sending troops to Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are both in the middle of wars.

The extension will leave 1,198 members of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) in eastern Congo for an unknown amount of time. They are there as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force helping Congo fight rebel groups.

The statement also said that 1,495 members of the SANDF would keep working in Mozambique, where they have been since 2021 helping the government fight dangerous extremism in the north.

After two SANDF troops were killed and three were hurt by a mortar bomb in Congo in February, South Africa’s military operations abroad have been looked at more closely at home this year.

Meanwhile, the major opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance, said that Ramaphosa sent troops into a war zone without being ready.
Under the supervision of the UN, the SANDF has taken on many dangerous and difficult peacekeeping tasks over the years to help war-torn African countries stay stable and peaceful.

In 2003, South Africa was one of the first countries to send troops to Burundi to help the peace process. During the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) peacekeeping mission in 2000, the SANDF led attempts to stabilize the country’s politics, rebuild and improve infrastructure, and train DRC troops.