Treason: Uwazuruike ready to go to prison – MASSOB

 The Movement for Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, said yesterday in Owerri, the Imo State capital, its leader, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, was prepared to go to prison.

MASSOB’s Deputy National Director of Information, Mazi Chris Mocha, who spoke on behalf of the group, was reacting to the order of the Supreme Court directing the Federal High Court to resume Uwazuruike’s treason trial.

Mocha vowed that the group would not to waiver in its determination to prosecute the Federal Government and the police at the International Criminal Court of Justice, ICCJ, for the gruesome killing and dumping of over 50 Igbo youths including nine MASSOB members in Azu River in Anambra State.

According to him, Uwazuruike is not jittery of going back to prison again because he has done that earlier.

He said: “The threat to rearrest Chief Uwazuruike is for us to withdraw our case at ICCJ. We cannot withdraw the case against the police authorities for that genocide.”

Mocha explained that Uwazuruike, who was arrested on October 25, 2005 and granted three months bail by the Federal High Court on October 26, 2007 to bury his late mother, Mrs. Monica Uwazuruike, on January 19, 2008, voluntarily submitted himself after the burial.

He said: “After the burial of his mother, Chief Uwazuruike submitted himself to Imo State Police Command on January 22, 2008 to be taken back to prison, but the then commissioner of police was said to be holding security meeting and directed DCP Ahmed Yusuf to refuse to take Uwazuruike into custody.”

While re-emphasising the group’s resolve to pursue the matter to its logical conclusion, Mocha disclosed that no police intimidation could stop his members as they had employed the services of two international lawyers to handle the killing and dumping of the innocent Igbo youths in river.

Meanwhile, MASSOB Okgiwe zone in Imo State has joined other members to request its sons and daughters in the area to remain at home on June 8 to protest against the Nigerian state over the senseless killings of Ndi-igbo in different parts of the country, particularly in the North.

In a statement signed by its regional leaders in Okigwe, Onu-imo, Ehime Mbano, and Isiala Mbano, the spokesman for the zone, Kingsley Ezeugo, accused the international community of watching the killing of Igbo Christians with “conspirational silence”.

He said: “Never in history have a people been so brutalised, hated and traumatised as they have done to the Igbo tribe of eastern Nigeria.”