Umeh Canvasses Amnesty For MASSOB …As Police Arrest 26

Chairman of the All
Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Victor Umeh, has called for the institution of an amnesty programme for the rehabilitation of Igbo youths involved in the struggle for the realisation of the state of Biafra.
Umeh, who made the call while speaking with journalists in Enugu last Wednesday, said the amnesty programme for the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) youths and members of Biafra Zionist Movement (BZM) had become imperative as Nigerians were in search of a peaceful and united country.
He also urged the Federal Government to release unconditionally, all members of the pro-Biafra groups being held in various detention cells across the country, in the spirit of the ongoing national reconciliation.
Umeh said the Federal Government should halt the ongoing prosecution of the members of BZM, who were arrested in Enugu and all members of  MASSOB, who were standing trial in various courts in the country.
The APGA leader, who made the call after reviewing the situation of the MASSOB youths, which he likened to what the Niger Delta militants were undergoing before the Federal Government instituted an amnesty programme for them, urged the Federal Government “to take this action because the MASSOB youths, who had been misused in the past by their leaders, have since revolted against the treatment that they had been subjected to over the years.”
He urged the Federal Government to rehabilitate them through an amnesty programme adding,  “It is on record that the corpses of many MASSOB youths are still littered all over the mortuaries in South East Nigeria up till this moment.
The youths have since protested against the way they have been used by their leaders in the phantom struggle for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra and have already formed what they now call Igbo Ga Dimma Youth Organisation.”
The Imo State Police Command  have confirmed  that the 26 members of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), arrested last weekend by soldiers in Owerri for wearing the Biafran uniform, have been charged to court and  remanded at the Okigwe Prison.
Police spokesman Andrew Enwerem had denied knowledge of the whereabouts of the men.
But Police Commissioner Abdulmajid Ali, who spoke to reporters at the command’s headquarters, said the Army handed over the MASSOB members to the Police on Monday night and they had been charged to the Okigwe Customary Court.
He said: “The MASSOB members were handed over to the Police by the Army on Monday night and we took them to court on Tuesday after preparing their charges. So the information that they are missing or that their whereabouts is unknown is untrue.”

Some equipment used for illegal broadcasting within Onitsha and Awka, recently seized by the Nigeria Copyright Commission (NCC), last Tuesday. Photo: NAN