IPOB Reacts To Reports It Killed Police, Oil Workers In Imo State

The outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has denied responsibility for the killing of a police officer and six oil workers in Imo State on Monday.

There are reports in the media of how a convoy transporting workers to a facility belonging to the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria was ambushed and the occupants in the bus were shot dead by gunmen.

Six of the victims were working with a services company, Lee Engineering Company, which has a contract with Shell, the police spokesperson in Imo State, Mike Abattam, told the press.

The police inspector, who provided security for the convoy, was among the victims.

Although the group had announced the suspension of its weekly sit-at-home exercise, many people in the region still stayed at home on Monday 'for fear of being attacked'.

“We have no hands in such barbarity. We are not bandits or terrorists that spill blood,” IPOB spokesperson who has the pseudonym, Emma Powerful, said in a statement on Thursday.

“IPOB is a non-violent and peaceful movement whose agenda is the restoration of Biafra. Killing or maiming of innocent lives is not part of our mandate.”

IPOB said those who linked the group to the killing of the oil workers are “enemies of the struggle” for the “restoration” of Biafra.

IPOB spokesperson, Powerful, said IPOB had no basis to attack the oil workers, having cancelled the sit-at-home order.

“IPOB is (a) well-structured movement with orderliness and Command-and-Control. We are not lawless bandits. Nobody should associate us with barbaric acts typical of blood-sucking terrorists,” the group said.

IPOB is a Biafran separatist and Igbo nationalist organization in Nigeria. It says its main aim is to restore an independent state of Biafra in the South East of Nigeria through an independence referendum.