Rivers youths warn Baifra agitators to stay-off Port Harcourt

The youth wing of the Rivers Elders and Leaders Council, an umbrella body of Rivers State indigenes, has warned members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to stay-off Rivers State and stop seeing Port Harcourt as their conquered territory.

The President of the body, Eze Miller Sampson, in a press statement issued yesterday said the continued “invasion of Port Harcourt and other parts of Rivers State by IPOB members during their protest and rallies is illegal, misguided and unacceptable”.

Miller said the youths of Rivers State will no longer tolerate what he described as deliberate show of might by IPOB members and other Biafra agitators who he said constantly invade and make fictitious claims to the ownership of Port Harcourt City and Rivers State as a whole.

He said, “we have not forgotten the devastating experience and maltreatment suffered by our parents from Biafra warlords during the civil war of 1967, occasioned by the forceful evacuation of women, men

and children from our local communities such as Okrika, Bakana, Buguma, Ikwerre and Ogu to places in

the Eastern region with the intention of perfecting its total control of Rivers State.

“Most of the evacuees never returned. Could this action which resulted to an unquantifiable loss and in some instances led to the mutilation of our value system, norms, languages and general way of life be described as an act of love and brotherliness? They should let sleeping dog lie because we are yet to fully recover from the horrors of the civil war.”

He added, “our grievances are further heightened by the unilateral conscription of Rivers State and her territorial waters into the so called Map of Biafra. This is a systematic design to provoke us and push us into another state of anarchy and war. Why are the Igbos not contented with the numerous cities in the South-east such as Nnewi, Onitsha, Okigwe, Umuahia, Aba, Owerri, Enugu, Orlu, Nsukka and allow Port Harcourt the only city we have to remain in peace.”