ONITSHA – In what looked like an attempt to set the records straight about the much publicized killings of members of the Indigenous People Of Biafra, IPOB, at Nkpor in Anambra state on May 30, 2016 during the remembrance ceremony of
Biafra Heroes who died during the 1967 – 1970 Biafran war, the governor of Anambra state, Chief Willie Obiano Wednesday tendered an unreserved apology to IPOB members.
He said it was not only regrettable that such a number of Biafra agitators were massacred but also sad that the impression held in some quarters that he was responsible for the massacre could not be substantiated.
The governor who spoke when he received the members of Biafran War Veterans led by Gen. Joe Achuzie (Air raid) at Governor’s Lodge, Amawbia, who paid him a condolence visit over the death of his mother, Mrs. Christiana Obiano (Adinije), said that he could not have ordered the killing of those who voted for him in 2013 election.
Obiano stated that he has a mentality that guides him in issues of conviction which made him against all opinions and vehemence from federal authorities to still go ahead to bury those that died during the civil war, less than a year into the life span of his administration.
“Abuja was against my plan to bury the victims of Biafran war, there was a lot of opposition to it from security agencies but I went on to bury our dead war heroes. As a young boy during the war, I knew what happened. I saw many dead bodies and I know the importance of according proper burial to the departed even more so those that departed in the painful and regrettable way as they did”.
“So, I had to embrace all odds to bury them in an elaborate ceremony on the 12th of January 2015, less that one year into my administration. How then will I contemplate killing their off springs for the same reason of Biafra. I didn’t do that, I’m innocent of the name calling”.
Gov. Willie Obiano further said that the report the security agencies made available to him on the incident showed that nobody was killed but that when he visited the hospitals; Menax hospital and St. Charles Borromeo hospital all in Onitsha, among others to see the victims and to provide succor to them, that he was told at the hospitals that people were killed and that some of those killed and the injured were taken out of the state to neighbouring states as very many of them came from outside Anambra state”.
