Tension is gathering in Owerri, the Imo State capital, following the arrest and detention of a chieftain of the Uwazuruike-led Biafra Independent Movement (BIM)/(MASSOB) by the Tiger Squad of the Imo state police command.
Chief Chukwueke Amadi and his son, Uchechukwu, were said to have been arrested last Friday, in a midnight raid on his residence at Umuneke Ngor, according to a statement by BIM/MASSOB Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Chris Mocha.
At the time of filing this report, it was still not clear why they were arrested. A register belonging to the Ngor Okpala regional members of the movement, 12 plastic chairs and other items, including two handsets, and cash of about N26,000 were allegedly taken away during the arrest.
Following the development, the leadership of BIM/MASSOB has assured its members in the state of the safety of the detained regional administrator for Ngor- Okpala council area, promising that he would return home alive.
Mocha, who was responding to claims in some quarters that the task force drafted to Imo State were all out to arrest and kill Biafra agitators, dismissed such thoughts. He said the non-violence and non-exodus philosophy adopted by Chief Ralph Uwazuruike has saved the Igbo tribe of eastern Nigeria from another tragedy which would have befallen the region, insisting that non-violence remained the greatest weapon through which the state of Biafra could be achieved.
The statement argued that while some of the hoodlums were arrested in the forest, Amadi and his son, Uchechukwu were allegedly picked up in their Umuneke-Ngor community residence in Ngor -Okpala LGA of Imo State. Mocha, however, urged the police to arraign Amadi and his son, Uchechukwu, in court, if they were still alive or release them.
He said: “The members of BIM/MASSOB, including Chief Chukwueke Amadi, are very innocent and harmless members of a peaceful organisation; they should be released from custody since they are no threat to Imo State or the federal government.”
