“IPOB Is Intensely Serious, Committed, Determined And Focused On The Biafran Project” – Doyin Okupe

Doyin Okupe, the former aide to ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, has said that secessionist group the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) headed by Nnamdi Kanu is intensely serious and focused on the struggle for a free Biafran nation.

He noted that the young generation of Biafrans who are in the forefront of the struggle were not born during the civil war yet have shown high level of commitment and fanaticism towards the realization of their dreams of a sovereign republic of Biafra.

Okupe also said that majority of the Igbos who reside in the south east worship Nnamdi Kanu like a saviour.

He stated: “In the East, though the youth are in the forefront like in the North, the elders are also with and behind the position and expressed aspirations of the youths.

“Those who are opposed to the Biafra project are mainly the migrant Igbos, who are traders and businessmen, living and resident far from home; with heavy investments in their places of business and domicile. Many intellectuals and politicians are also in this group.

“For these sets of Igbos, a restructured Nigeria is a better, safer and more secure option. “Nnamdi Kanu and the leadership of the IPOB have apparently taken over the southeast as the new and emerging conscience of the Igbos.

“They enjoy a new cultish support from the youthful population, who virtually worship them as their saviors.

“One outstanding feature of the group and their fanatical followers is the fact that they are intensely serious, committed, determined and focused on the Biafra project.

“It will appear that no appeasement will be acceptable to them apart from a free Biafran state.

“Unfortunately they are completely dislocated and detached from the mainstream political elite class in the east and elsewhere in the country.

“Ironically, they are not the generation that the North holds in unforgiveness. They did not even fight nor were born in period of the civil war.

“They appear to me to care very little about the North or any other part of the country except perhaps their South-South neighbors. They do not know the North and the North does not know them.

“They are young but not naive. War is not in their “planned route” to freedom; it will appear.”