The Coalition of Northern Groups, CNG, has praised the arrest of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and Yoruba Nation agitators, Chief Sunday Adeyemo popularly called Sunday Igboho.
The Coalition accused southern elites and governments of sponsoring Kanu and arming Igboho to perpetrate violence against Northern interest in the south.
This was contained in a statement on Tuesday signed by Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, spokesperson of the CNG.
CNG urged the federal government to dig deeper to expose sponsors of both secessionist agitators while warning that the arrest will not be the end of uprising and disturbances in southern Nigeria.
The Northern Coalition also accused the Yoruba leaders including their governments as using to scare the North into agreeing to cede power without competition.
Abdul-Azeez Suleiman said, “from the outset, we wish to be categoric that the arrest of Igboho and Kanu should not be mistaken as bringing about the end to the uprisings and disturbances over self-determination perpetrated by southern Nigerian elites and governments who use thugs like Igboho and Kanu.
“We insist that rather than seeing the arrest as an end in itself, it should be the beginning of the processes for self-determination by any unit that wants to go. Therefore we insist on a peaceful referendum for separation from a people who would at the slightest of pretexts, attack, kill and destroy people of other regions and their properties especially those from the North.”
The statement added that, “The arrest if considered along with that of Kanu should serve as a lesson to those blind followers who are instigated into setting fire to their own backyards whereas the instigators of such lawlessness and violence almost all the time have a fallback option that includes escaping abroad.
The two arrests also attest to the level of cross-regional cooperation that is working across Africa,”