Dennis Naku, Port Harcourt
Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has charged the 23 local government chairmen in the state and youths to fish members of the proscribed Indigenous Peoples Organisation of Biafra in the state.
The governor warned that any council chairman who allows IPOB to hold processions and hoist its flag within their jurisdiction in Rivers State risked sacking.
Wike handed down the warning during a meeting with the council chairmen, Community Development Committees and youths leaders at the Government House, in Port Harcourt on Monday.
The governor, in a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Media, Kelvin Ebiri, described Rivers as the most accommodating state for all Nigerians.
“We can never be against any ethnic group. We have lived in harmony with the Igbo, the Hausa, and with Edo people. Everybody that comes to this state we have lived in harmony with. So Nigerians must commend Rivers State as a place where you have never had problem between this group and that group,” he said.
Wike, however, maintained that while the people of Rivers State believe in the unity of the country, they will not allow criminals under the aegis of a terrorist group called IPOB to continue to threaten the stability of the state.
“There is one terrorist group they call IPOB. I did not declare them terrorist group, the court declared them terrorist group. The Federal Government declared them a terrorist group. IPOB cannot use Rivers State to be place where they will be launching attacks. If you allow that, your future, your children’s future is gone,” he said.
He expressed annoyance that IPOB planned to hoist its flag in Oyigbo.
“Go to Oyigbo and see what they have done. They destroyed the court. What did the court do? See the soldiers they killed and burnt. See the policemen they killed and burnt, and then you said people will sit and fold their arms,” he stated.
While calling for vigilance, he warned the IPOB members that Rivers State could not be colonised.
He charged the council bosses, youth leaders, CDCs to go into their various communities and identify all those IPOB members, adding that nobody of Igbo extraction legitimately residing and doing business in the state must be harassed.
“But there are criminal elements that we must not allow, and the criminal elements are those who said they are IPOB members. Federal Government has proscribed them, I have proscribed them,” he added.
