ARMY HUNTING DOWN INJURED IPOB MEMBERS, RELATIONS MOVE VICTIMS

MANY relations of injured victims of the Biafra Day clash between security operatives and members of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, in parts of Anambra State were believed to be moving them out of the hospitals where they were initially admitted for treatment to unknown places for fear that members of the state’s Joint Security Task Force might be hunting for them.

This came on the heels of an allegation by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule Law, a civil rights group, that security operatives shot, killed, picked corpses and buried the victims in unknown places. Vanguard gathered that between Monday and yesterday, scores of shot victims were removed from some of the hospitals where they were admitted after the clash and taken to undisclosed clinics within and beyond the state by their relatives and sympathizers.

Some of the relations said they received information that the victims might be arrested on their hospital beds if they were found in the hospitals. According to them, apart from high medical bills and other financial challenges, there were fears that soldiers might storm the hospitals to abduct them. In the meantime, the chairman of board of trustees of INTERSOCIETY, Mr. Emeka Umeagbalsi, said that investigations by his organization showed that the casualty figures were swelling in number on a daily basis. 

He said that information at the disposal of the organization showed that 14 critically injured persons were at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, 15 at the Multicare Hospital, Nkpor and nine at St. Mary’s Hospital, Nnewi.

He also said that there were scores of others in other private hospitals, such as Crown and St Michael Hospitals in Nkpor, while others were at Okija, Asaba, among other places. Army Army Meanwhile, the Secretary General of Igbo Improvement Union, Chief Edozie Njoku, yesterday, urged the Federal Government to address the issue of MASSOB and IPOB carefully and without bias.

In a statement made available to Vanguard, Njoku said IPOB did not do more harm than the herdsmen, who had been ravaging parts of the country and yet security operatives had not reacted the way they did to IPOB.

He said: “The Fulani herdsmen are committing more harm than the IPOB and MASSOB and there has not been any reprisal from the Federal Government. Those of us who supported the president during election must now start crying out and we want to say that enough is enough.