THOUSANDS of members and supporters of
the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra shut
down Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, demanding to break away
from Nigeria on Tuesday.
Waving the Biafran flag as they marched
through major roads in Port Harcourt, both MASSOB members and their
supporters chanted war songs as they also demanded the unconditional
release of one of their members, Mr. Nnamdi Kalu, said to have been
arrested by the police in Lagos.
Though, the MASSOB members were
tear-gassed by men of the Nigeria Police, the action did not deter them
from marching through Ikoku, Ikwerre and the Government House in Port
Harcourt.
The policemen later stopped firing teargas at the protesters and decided to watch the protest march by over 3,000 youths.
The protesters displayed placards with
inscriptions such as, ‘A state of Biafra is non-negotiable,’ ‘On Biafra,
we stand,’ ‘It is do or die,’ ‘We need our freedom peacefully,’ and
‘Release Nnamdi Kalu now.’
The peaceful demonstration caused a
gridlock along Ikwerre road as a result of the huge number of persons
involved in the protest, even as men of the Joint Military Task Force
watched as the youths chanted freedom songs.
It was observed that some police
operatives decided to shoot into the air to scare away the protesters
when they (police) noticed that some of the protesters had stormed the
premises of a new generation bank on Ikwerre road and pulled down a
Nigerian flag.
One of the protesters, who identified
himself as Okechukwu, told our correspondent that he had decided to
sacrifice his life for the struggle to actualise Biafra as a country.
According to Okechukwu, who is a member
of the Indigenous People of Biafra, “I will not stop being part of this
struggle to actualise the sovereign state of Biafra. I am ready to
sacrifice my life for this struggle so that my children will enjoy the
freedom that will come from it.”
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