2nd February, 2012
To bail out Igbos stranded in the North, the leader of Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike has sent 20 luxury buses to convey his kinsmen to the East at no cost.
The gesture was announced in an advertorial in a national daily today.
Igbos and other southerners are fleeing the north because of attacks on them by the Boko Haram fundamentalist sect.
Uwazuruike noted that Igbos are stranded in the north as transport fares have gone up astronomically since they started returning to the East in droves to escape the incessant bomb attacks by the Boko Haram Islamist Sect.
Uwazuruike said one of the 20 buses he hired will convey Igbos in Abuja back home while the remaining 19 will be distributed to other states in the north according to a formula based on exigencies.
The MASSOB leader assured the Igbo returnees that they will be initially quartered in Okwe, Onuimo Local Government Area of Imo State where a refugee camp already exists, adding that five refugee centres will be opened in the course of time, with two located in Imo and Anambra and one in Enugu State.
For easy link with the buses and to begin arrangement to travel back to the East, Igbos in the North were advised to call two help lines, 07032635198 or 08038734457.
Uwazuruike reiterated his earlier call on Igbos in the North to send their wives and children home while the men could stay back to monitor their investments in the North.
At a meeting held at the residence of the late Biafra leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, last weekend, Uwazuruike ordered Igbos in the North to return home since Boko Haram has not withdrawn its quit order on Christians and Southerners in the North.
Meanwhile, a political pressure group based in Northern Nigeria, Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF has justified the 2 January Boko Haram order issued to southerners residing in the north to leave or be attacked by the dreaded group.
ACF Wednesday at a press conference in Kaduna at the Sokoto Road ACF quarters said those blaming Boko Haram for issuing the order were unfair, when in the first place the southerners were the first to issue such order that northerners should leave the south .
Though ACF Chairman , Alhaji Aliko Mohammed said the group is not supporting Boko Haram for issuing such order, he said there was need to properly understand that the southerners started first before Boko Haram retaliated.
According to him, until the Federal Government wakes up to its responsibility of ensuring the security of Nigerians where ever they reside, the kind of situation where a group will just wake up and order some Nigerians to leave a part of the country, will continue.
On his reaction concerning the large number of Igbos leaving the north, Mohammed claimed they as northern leaders have not asked the Igbos to leave, but later said the Igbos can go if they want to go.
The spokesman for Boko Haram, Abul Qaqa was arrested yesterday
—Amos Fabiyi & Adi Femi/Kaduna