Northern youths to drag IPOB to ICC

The Coalition of Northern Groups has vowed to take the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged plan to cause violence in the country and genocide against northerners.

Addressing the press in Kano yesterday, spokesperson of the coalition, Abdulazeez Suleiman, said the group would approach ICC with facts and evidence of incitement and possible mass atrocity crimes or even genocide against the North by the IPOB.

Suleiman, who spoke on behalf of the Chairman of the group, Nastura Ashir Sheriff, urged the federal government and all security agencies to be mindful of IPOB members, alleging that the agitations and disturbances going on ceaselessly in the country since 2015 were aimed at rendering the country ungovernable.

Suleiman said, “The targeting of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is a calculated plan to cause inter-regional crisis that may lead to general unrest. The resurgence of separatist agitations especially the violent brand by the IPOB and its ilk in the southeast represents a wider conspiracy to divide the north along ethnic and religious faultiness as well as achieve balkanization of the North.”

He said the southeast agitations for separation and cry for Biafra would become lauder and agitators supported by politicians would become emboldened to act in more radical and violent manner, thereby sparking retaliation in the north with subsequent attacks to be perpetrated against the northerners in the southeast.

“In such event the north will then be held up as the real culprit and the cause of the breakup of Nigeria. All the scenarios are playing out today and planned to escalate probably in 2018 to prevent a successful conduct of 2019 general elections and eventually the collapse of democracy,” he charged.