By Ali Elias
The Igbo Women Assembly (IWA) has urged the Chief of Defense Staff (CDS), Gen. Christopher Musa, to focus on combating killer herdsmen terrorizing the South East rather than targeting members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
Responding to Musa’s caution against promoting IPOB and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), the women said the real threat to peace is from “rampaging herders displacing communities,” not IPOB.
In a statement by its National President, Lolo Nneka Chimezie, IWA stressed: “IPOB members are not terrorists but our children protesting marginalization. From 1966 till date, no Igbo man has led Nigeria. We are grossly excluded from political appointments and promotions, especially in security agencies.”
They accused the federal government of double standards: “While bandits and terrorists who kill citizens are granted amnesty, peaceful IPOB members are hunted down, detained, or killed.”
On the broader implications, the group warned that the alienation and brutalization of Igbo youths by security agents were systematically depopulating the region. “Our youths are migrating out of fear. Roadblocks have become extortion points. Reprisals against villages whenever security agents are attacked deepen insecurity and resentment,” they said.
IWA also condemned the influx of “strange faces” into South East communities, alleging an agenda to dispossess indigenous populations of their ancestral lands.
The group called for immediate dismantling of military roadblocks and urged the federal government to initiate genuine dialogue with IPOB: “Gen. Musa must understand: the real problem is not IPOB. It is the unchecked violence of killer herdsmen and the federal government’s militarization of the South East.”
If the situation remains unaddressed, analysts fear that continued alienation and insecurity could accelerate the socio-economic collapse of the South East, already witnessing youth flight, market disruptions, and fear-driven desertion of rural areas.
The full version of this report can be read in Vanguard Newspaper.