2 pro-Biafra groups fight over boycotting 2019 polls

Two pro-Biafra groups, the Biafra Government in Exile (BGIE) and the Biafra Shadow Government (BSG) said they have distanced themselves from the 2019  general elections in Nigeria and called on “all Biafran citizens to adopt this stance and boycott the elections.”

In a statement issued on Sunday in Enugu, both BGIE and BSG said, “No government of Nigeria or administration of any arm of Nigeria’s government within Nigeria’s current geopolitical space supports Biafra in any form or configuration, beginning in 1966.”

The statement was jointly signed by Yahgozie Immanuel, communication officer for BGIE, and Godspet Uhagiro, head of information directorate for BSG.

But in a quick reaction, the Uchenna Madu-led Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) said it was not in support of any call for the boycott of the polls.

MASSOB’s spokesman, Samuel Edeson, told Daily Trust: “We said that any group who feels that they want to boycott the elections is free to do so but we are advising people to go and vote because whether they vote or not, the elections will hold. So the boycott will not change anything.”

“If they fail to vote for their representatives, the federal government will impose an administrative measure on them,” he said.

“We as MASSOB, we are not going to ask anybody to boycott or to vote in the elections.

“MASSOB may decide to vote or not to vote; but we are not asking people to boycott the elections. We are still consulting as at now.”

According to Immanuel and Uhagiro, “If we vote, we are supporting our own perpetual slavery by endorsing and consenting to our own eternal enslavement: we are helping kill your own souls.

“If we don’t vote, we are exercising the only freedom we have in this matter, which is to say, no, to unconscionable subjugation. We are in effect saying ‘I know you will kill us, and we do not have the power to stop you at this time, but we will never submit to you and make it easier by offering you our unprotected neck.’

“Finally, whether Biafrans vote or not, the status quo will remain the same, hence our position to encourage Biafrans to boycott the exercise and focus on gaining their freedom and extricating themselves from Nigeria.”